Category: daddy stuff

Another Lesson From John

I didn’t realize I had a problem with vanity until the last week. Why would I? I’ve always sort of thought of myself as Joe Average. You know, the guy you will pass on the street or in the store and forget about a few seconds later. I was OK with that. The thing most people would remember about me is my height.

This past Sunday morning, I woke up and something was wrong. I had a pretty bad headache, and my face felt weird. It wasn’t exactly numb, but I couldn’t move my mouth like I wanted to. I took some Ibuprofen for the headache, and off we went to church–Jenny and I had a Sunday school lesson–we’re teaching about the Nativity, introducing one “character” each week. As the lesson progressed, I listened to the kids singing Christmas songs and I couldn’t stop touching my face. Now, my left eye felt kind of burny and gritty. I pulled my eyelid closed and that helped a little.

We went home after church and by the time we finished lunch, I couldn’t blink my left eye at all, and the left side of my face felt completely numb. My left eye and cheek drooped on my face, and when I spoke it was like I had a mouthful of mashed potatoes if I went on for too long (probably a good thing for my wife, as I am a bit of a chatterbox).

At first, I thought I’d had or was having a stroke. Except I didn’t have any of the other symptoms people talk about with strokes. We started doing research online and it seemed it may be something called Bell’s Palsy, which was supposedly a temporary facial paralysis of either (and occasionally, both) sides of the face.

My doctor was able to confirm the diagnosis, and prescribed medication to hopefully speed the recovery process, which can be anywhere from a couple weeks to several months. In the meantime, I have to wear an eyepatch because my left eye won’t close. When I speak, my lips sometimes twist up, like I’m blowing a kiss off to the right.

In short, I’m not at my most handsome. I’m seeing the Dr today and hopefully getting cleared to go back to work next week, and I’m kind of nervous about it. I look funny, I talk funny. I take a ton of pills. Not looking forward to being in the fishbowl an office or test can be. Nevertheless, I have to work.

So this morning, I was sitting on the couch with my four year old, and he asked me, “Are you OK, dad?”

I told him dad was a little sick still, and didn’t feel very good.

“How are you sick, dad? Does that eye patch make you sick?”

“No, daddy’s eye just gets dried out, and he has to keep a bandage on it.”

“Well, I love you with an eye patch, dad.”

“I love you, too, bud. What if Dad only had one eye, or no eyes?”

“I would still love you with no eyes. But you would be weird.”

Couldn’t help but laugh.

“You always weird, anyway, dad.”

I laughed again, and had to agree with him. I usually am pretty weird.

So hopefully, I will get cleared to go back to work. Weird, eyepatch, and all. Let’s do it.

Father’s Day in Yakima

For about ten years, now, I’ve been getting this pain in my neck every once in a while. I imagine it’s some kind of pinched nerve, or something of that nature, but since it’s only occasionally, I never sought any kind of treatment for it. I call it my “tourette’s neck,” because it sometimes makes me jerk my head to the side when it happens. It happened during our wedding ceremony and it was all I could do not to jerk and twitch. I didn’t, thank goodness.

It hasn’t happened in a while, which is good.

Last August, I had my right rotator cuff surgically repaired, and it has never been the same since, not really. I have my range of motion back, but it still hurts pretty good most mornings, like maybe Dr Peare forgot to put something back in.

Over the past week or so here in Yakima, both things have been bothering me, on and off. My shoulder, especially. I know Jenny has been having a hard time of it as well, and I’ve been missing her and the boys something terrible. Last week, I went to a church Jorge told me about, and it was amazing. It’s called Changing Pointe, and if you’re ever in Yakima, that would be the place I’d send you. Last week it was about “Surviving the Pressure,” and it was right on point (I need to get Jenny to listen to it). At the end of the service, Pastor Eli did an altar call, and probably 30 or so people came up. Never seen such a response to an altar call. He prayed for everyone, and found a way to lay hands on each and every person for just a few seconds while he did it.

So another week went by, and every day I missed Jen a little bit more. I had lots of time to think, and what I mainly thought about is how I have to do better for my kids. I’ve got the providing part down, and God has really blessed my wife and I financially over the past year. The part I struggle with is leading my family–in giving them an example of what it looks like to really love God, and give everything to him. I mean everything in the sense of myself, by the way.

Today, father’s day, the sermon was the second in the Surviving the Pressure series, with an understandable segue toward what this day means to fathers and children. There was a slide presentation for Pastor Eli some folks made, and while it played a man on the praise team sang a song the Pastor had written, and it was really beautiful. I was a wreck before the sermon even started. Plus, my shoulder was burning, and I kept jerking my head around like one of those Roxbury guys on SNL.

Two quotes from his talk stuck in my mind (regarding fatherhood. He talked about witnessing his own father praying for his family–earnestly praying for them–in the small hours of the evening one time, and how he thinks about that when he wonders what do about being a parent), the first being this:

Fathers, what do your children see you doing as an outlet for pressure?

Crap. My kids see me get mad, or lash out in some way, or simply retreat and clam up.

The other was, Dads, don’t lose heart. Find a way. Lead the way.

Exactly what has been on my heart lately. In fact, it would be fair to say this was one of those times when it seemed like a pastor was talking directly to me the whole time he was in the pulpit. And the thought that occurred to me today was in the form of the Sanctus Real song “Lead Me,” which absolutely destroys me every time I listen to it.

So that was in my mind when Pastor Eli got to the end of his sermon and to the invitation part. I don’t remember much of what he said at that point, exactly, but it was something about dads and pressure. And leading. And finding a way. I thought about going up there, and then decided against it. Then I figured there would be thirty people again, and I could be relatively anonymous.

The urge to go was almost overwhelming, so up there I went, and you can probably guess what happened. It was just me. So there I was in front of the stage, and the music started swelling loudly. He placed his hands on my head and began to pray–I couldn’t hear a word he said, but it didn’t really matter. He placed both of his hands on my neck for a few seconds, and then on my shoulders. Had my stress and tension been that obvious?

I couldn’t hear his words, but I could feel them. My shoulder loosened up, and my neck stopped twitching. I stood there for a few more seconds, and then he shook my hand and that was it.

I went out to my rental car and listened to the voicemails my kids had left while I was in church. Started crying like a schoolgirl again, and then I sent a video message to my wife for them to listen to (it took me two tries before I could do it without tearing up).

So if I take nothing away from this trip except some extra per diem and a couple of paychecks, in the end I did realize what the most important thing was:

Finding a way. Leading the way.

How can I expect my kids to behave in a way I don’t behave myself?

How can I be an example to them if I do not follow the example Christ set before me?

I have some work to do.

Here’s Changing Pointe’s Vimeo link if you have some time:

http://vimeo.com/changingpointe

Funny how sometimes things just fall into place.

Bionic Dad

Father’s day is coming up once again, and I am understandably thinking about my own father. Every time you turn on the TV, there are Father’s Day commercials. People post them online, and tell you to grab Kleenex before you watch. Inevitably, I will watch, and often end up a little (or a lot) on the misty side. The commercials all show dads doing dad things, and what usually tears me up is that I don’t remember a lot of that with my own dad. This is not to say that it did not happen, only that I don’t remember it.

My father was from a different generation than a lot of my friends parents were, and he was much older. He was 39 when I was born, but he looked and acted much older. The irony there is that he was younger than I was when my little guy was born. Anyway, it seems to me that the generation he came out of was not so…nurturing and…”touchy-feely” as a lot of men–a lot of dads–later became. I don’t remember a single instance of him talking about his feelings, or anyone else’s. It wasn’t his fault–it was just how things were.

So most of the memories I have of feeling nurtured or loved on concern my older sisters. I suppose that is often the role of women in the lives of boys. It certainly was in mine. Consequently, I wanted to spend as much time as I could with my sisters. It made sense to me then, but I have no idea how it made my dad feel that I didn’t want to be around the house much. I never had the opportunity to ask him. Not when I was old enough to understand that my behavior toward him might have been hurtful in some way. He died in 1984, when I was 16. He died before I learned to drive. He didn’t see me graduate. He didn’t usher me off to college (nobody, did, actually. I didn’t start until I was in my 20’s, and I didn’t graduate until this year).

Recently, though, I have been actively trying to remember things, and looking at a lot of pictures, and little snippets of Dad have been coming to me. Rising up in my memory like little slips of paper with things written on them.

Dad sitting in the kitchen with a BB gun, waiting to shoot a mouse.

Dad driving through Jack in the Box to get me pancakes before we went out on his sailboat.

Dad making me rubber band guns in the garage.

Dad taking me and one of my friends to see the first Jaws movie.

Dad finding me when I got lost at the swap meet once.

Dad taking a washer or dryer in his arms and wrestling it out of the back of his pickup.

Dad seeing a swear word on a rock at the bay and draping a towel over it so my mom wouldn’t have to see it.

Dad teaching me how to pull the guts out of fish.

He didn’t often–possibly ever, that I can remember–tell me he loved me, but he sure showed me an awful lot.

I remember listening to him getting ready for work and drinking coffee and talking with my mom. I would go out to the kitchen and say goodbye. We would do that whole “see you later, alligator” thing, and I loved it.

So there was a lot of good there, I just needed to go looking for it. There’s much more than the things I shared above, but I’m keeping them just for me.

I wonder what I would say to him given the opportunity?

I think I would certainly tell him that I loved him. Part of me would have wanted him to be different, but an even bigger part would have wanted me to be different. I suppose I was just being a typical adolescent and teenager, but that doesn’t excuse anything. Of course, had I known he only had a few short years left, I would have perhaps tried to do things differently. I didn’t know, and consequently I wasn’t the person I would have wanted to be.

I can’t live in the past, though when days come around like Father’s Day and Mother’s day I think to regret a few things.

What I do know is that I don’t want my own kids to wonder about me later on in their own lives, so that means I need to be a better and more significant part of their lives now. My generation is touchy-feely, and I need to get off my ass and touch and feel (in a non-creeperish sort of way, of course).

So as you might have guessed, I’m feeling pretty sentimental right now. I haven’t seen my kids or my wife in almost two weeks, and it is weighing on me something terrible. I hope the conviction I’m feeling now does not leave me, but stays burning in my heart.

I want very badly to be a good dad.

To that end, I know that some things need to happen. I need to depend more deeply on God, and not on myself and my own understanding. I need to turn to God, and trust him more (I don’t think we can ever do that enough). I need to stop thinking so much about what was lost and think about what is–thanks to His provenient Grace–yet to come. I need to think about God’s promise, given in Joel 2:25 to “repay the years the locusts have eaten.”

Absolutely no credit to myself, but I feel like things are looking up in that regard. Over the past week, all of my siblings, finally, are in touch. Yes, it is via social networking, but that is a very big something for us, and I feel that more good is to come.

There are only a few weeks left in this program, and then I will be home. And I can begin to do things like seek his truth for my life in scripture–along with my kids. They need to see that is important to me, and I need to show them.

I can’t turn back any clocks, and I don’t think I would want to if I could. What I can do is my best to be different.

Better, stronger, faster (ok, no, I’m not bionic, but I’ve always wanted to be. I liked that noise it would make when he did bionic stuff on the show–sort of a ch-ch-ch-ch kind of thing).

So there I go again. Out of place humor.

bionic

Don’t Miss Your Life

We took a very brief day trip to San Diego today with the kids, and it was great. We didn’t do much at all, really. We just decided to go this morning, and we got ready and off we went. We saw my sisters for about an hour and did a couple other things, and it was really nice. Then we came home. Normally, my first thought, or my first instinct would have been to whip out my phone at every photo opportunity and take pictures–mostly for blog fodder later on.

I didn’t do that today. My phone stayed in my pocket, and I didn’t take a single picture. Instead, I just visited, and ate lunch, and talked to my family. We played video games and skee ball at the Viejas Outlet Center, and we watched the water show while Jenny did a little shopping–or retail therapy–whatever you want to call it. It was fun just to hang out with my guys.

I hadn’t thought about writing anything about the day until just now, when I thought about how nice it was just to be with the family–to play games with the kids instead of taking pictures of them doing it.

It occurred to me those moments can’t be replaced. If you miss them, they are gone.

I think I want to start doing things differently. Maybe save blogging for reflection rather than documentation.

I don’t want to miss anything–I’ve missed enough already.

On Porn, and how Cyndi Lauper Can Help You Find Yourself

Over the past week or so, there’s been a story that keeps popping up on various online news sites (I saw something about it on CNN.com, Foxnews.com, Yahoo, and Drudge Report), regarding a young woman—a freshman at Duke University—was “outed” by a classmate as being a porn star. Ostensibly, she chose this particular career path because college is really expensive and she needed help with her tuition.

As an adult student nearing completion of my BA, finally, I can personally attest to the truth of this. College is freaking expensive. I chose the student loan path, however, rather than trying to break into the adult film industry as an overweight guy in his mid-40’s with more hair on his back than his head.

What got my head to spinning a little bit about this young woman was not her work (no, I did not try to find any, though I am certain it would have been easy), but a comment she made in an interview. There was a very short blurb on CNN where she said words to the effect that she found performing in porn “freeing.”

Who is freed?

As I can only speak from a male perspective, I would submit to anyone who cares to listen that porn isn’t freeing at all—quite the contrary. It’s enslaving.

It’s my belief that her attitude is something symptomatic of this current generation, which has somehow found itself steeped in moral relativism rather than any sort of values, traditional or otherwise. Hey, go ahead and do it if no one gets hurt. And sometimes even if they do.

Porn is freeing? It is not. I only wish I were not speaking from experience. If you want statistics, I am sure there are plenty of articles out there that will give them to you. That isn’t what I wanted to talk about today.

Porn is dangerous and harmful in so many ways. It is not, as the industry and those partaking in it would have you think, harmless or victimless–in my opinion, not to the consumers or the performers.

This line of reasoning, however, is what makes it so easy to fall back into the habit of looking at that shit and rationalizing it as simply entertainment.

Why is it harmful?

Again, from a male perspective, it gives young people–young men–a highly skewed (and highly incorrect) perception of what sex should be like, and how women (or men, I suppose) view it.

It objectifies both women and men and makes the act itself often a carnal buffet of grossness, supposedly meant to be titillating but often more along the lines of nauseating, at least to me.

Perhaps those without “religious” values or some kind of moral center would think of porn like the performers and partakers do, but it is so difficult for me to get my mind around that way of thinking, now that I realize the truth of it, and think about my own kids potentially getting involved in it or with it.

This young woman at Duke is not freeing herself, no matter what she might say or think. Kudos go out, I suppose, for her entrepreneurial spirit. She found a way to pay her tuition without going into debt. Yay.

Numerous meaningless sexual encounters with people who likely view her as little more than a…means to an end.

Meanwhile, young men (and possibly women—I don’t know anything from that perspective) are partaking in her work and developing an image in their little heads about what women are like, and what they want from a sexual encounter (which, I believe, is meant to be—as designed by God—within the framework of a marriage). In my opinion (and in my experience), that is not a game of naked Twister with…uh, visible results.

As someone who was single for most of my adult life, there was a time when I held that image of women that porn wanted me to. I am thankful that God showed me the truth of it. I was chained up by that nasty garbage for a number of years, and I know plenty of other men who were, too, at one point or another. I know men who have had their relationships and their marriages threatened by it, and lost to it.

It’s not harmless, people. It’s not victimless, either.

I can’t say how performing in porn damages the female psyches of young women.

I can’t say how it damages the psyches of the male performers, either.

What I can say is that if left unchecked, it can be an addiction like any other addiction. It can affect and even ruin lives. It can prevent or harm otherwise healthy relationships and marriages by giving men and women unrealistic and unhealthy ideas about sex and love, in a sense.

My personal belief is that if you reduce sex to a simply biological act, then you are detracting from what it was designed to be. The formula that porn tries to sell people is false. It’s smoke and mirrors. It’s bull, completely.

If you had a daughter, would you want her to be a porn star? How about your sister? Your mom?

Would you instruct your son on how to find the “best” porn online?

Rhetorical questions, certainly, and I hope the answers would be “no” if given.

All I know is when I was slave to that crap I was lost in almost every way a person can be lost. I found my way out, by the grace of God and the accountability of people I trusted. You can, too, if you’re stuck in that particular rut.

I was thinking about that stuff all the way to work today, and I remember asking God what to say about it? How can my words mean anything to anyone?

I was driving down 95 when the words of an old 1980’s song occurred to me, from the unlikely Cyndi Lauper.

If you’re lost you can look and you will find me

Time after Time

If you fall I will catch you, I’ll be waiting

Time after Time

I don’t know if that will mean anything to anyone else, but it did to me.

Clearly, she wasn’t writing about God. But that’s what the chorus made me think of today. Funny how that works.

When My Son Taught Me About Love

Our small group went to a Ken Davis comedy concert last night, and it was pretty good. Davis was funny, but he also talked about being married, and having kids. Above that, though, he talked about sharing the Good News of Jesus with people, and he did it well. He talked about raising kids, and grandkids, and about how fast it went.

He’s right. We got home after the show, and I looked at the boys, and it seemed like yesterday I could pick David up by one foot, and cradle John in one arm like a football. Not anymore. All of a sudden, David is a pre-adolescent, and the size of some adults. John is a tough little 3 year old. Damn, it goes so fast. I’m up with John right now and I can’t stop looking at him, waiting to see if I’ll actually be able to witness his growth. And now I’m also sitting here thinking that it’s so interesting how much we learn about ourselves and about God from our kids. Happens to me all the time. I wrote this piece a few months ago, and I read over it again this morning. I have great kids.

This morning I was thinking about my kids again. Not unusual for a parent, I know, but what I was thinking was that sometimes I wish they would be like other kids. I wish they would obey better, and not get in so much trouble. I wish they would be quiet when I’m trying to do school work. I wish they would be kinder to each other, and not be so obsessed with things.

And just now, sitting here in an air conditioned building miles into the desert, I realized I am no different, so how can I expect them to be? If what I see in them is not Jesus, isn’t that because they don’t see Jesus in me?

When I see them being selfish, or fighting, or not respecting the wishes of their mother and I, how am I any different from that with God? Do I love them any less because of what I perceive as their flaws? Or course not, though sometimes I act like it.

There can be no condition to love, or it is not love.

Brennan Manning wrote that God loves us as we are, and not as we should be. For all intents and purposes, I am Jesus to my sons. In that I represent him to them. So when they mess up because of some bad decision. or break something, or act other than Godly, I need to forget about who I think they ought to be and just love them for the imperfect creations they are.

My two year old taught me something about that just yesterday, and it breaks my heart to think of it again. I gave him a bath yesterday, and I usually take off my shirt when I do that, because he splashes around like a hooked fish, and will kick his feet and say “I swimming, daddy!”

Swim time was over and I still hadn’t put my shirt back on. I was sitting on my bed and getting John dressed. He stood at the foot of my bed and I noticed he was looking at me funny. This is where I should mention I have some moderate to serious skin issues with psoriasis. When I am able to get some sun on it and remember to treat it with ointment, it isn’t so bad. When I forget, it looks like this (I am only posting these as a frame of reference for what comes next)

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The top picture is on the side of my abdominal area, and the other is my right forearm. I have more on my calves and the other side of my abdomen. Consequently, I seldom take off my shirt in public. I hate the questions, and the looks. At first I thought John was giving me the look, which seemed strange because he’d seen my scars before.

What he did was just look for a moment, then slowly reach out his hand. He gently caressed each of my scars, and then leaned looked up at me and said “What’s that, Daddy? Owwies?”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s daddy’s owwies.”

Then he leaned forward and kissed the scars on my sides and my arm. “All better,” he said. “Love you, daddy.”

That was what undid me. I covered my face for a minute so he wouldn’t see my tears, but then I just picked him up and held him. And I thought that he didn’t care that my skin was ugly and scarred. He just loved me, scars, bad skin and all.

As I was, and not as I should be.

So today, my resolution is this: just love the boys, scars, warts, and all. They are not perfect and they never will be.

Neither will I.

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The Song That Always Plays in Your Head

It’s in the small hours that you hear the best. When the tiredness of your mind and body opens your ears and your heart. You hear him through the song that always plays in your head that suddenly gets a little louder.

You hear holy
holy
holy

and not only is it easier to hear, but easier to worship. His voice cuts through the quiet like a blade as the small soft breaths of your son are warm on your bare chest, close to your heart.

You know and feel and know and feel that someday all of this will be over and all that’s left will be you and him and that will be your time to curl in his lap or fall at his feet or maybe dance before him to the song that always plays in your head that you can suddenly hear a little better.

You realize that what matters most and is most real is the love you show people–all people. Even if, especially if they haven’t done

Anything

to deserve it.

You realize through and at your core the height and depth and width of the love that brought you to this place and you throw your head back and say

oh my God

Because you can’t kneel or do anything else because you’re holding thirty-odd pounds of toddler, even though the song that always plays in your head suddenly gets louder still.

Conviction comes that the love you’ve shown people has been feeble compared to the love shown you and suddenly it crashes into your heart anew and you feel the very hands of

He who was and is and is to come.

Your thumb is flying across the small keyboard because you don’t want to miss anything, even though you know your words can’t do the feeling any sort of justice.

You really just want people to know what it feels like.

You realize you have to tell them, no matter what.

And the song that always plays in your head quiets a little. It’s time to sleep once again, and you want to return to the warmth of your bed and the arms of your wife.

There is so much to do, and so very little time. The soft music in your head leads you down the hall as you deposit your son in his Angry Bird sheets. You see a light under the door of his big brother and realize he probably fell asleep with a book or video game control in his hand again. You remember yourself at almost 9.

You open your bedroom door and see her with an arm thrown over onto your side of the bed and you think that of all the things you’ve done in your life, it’s hard to find something on this earth that compares to laying next to this woman who loves you even though so much about you is wrong.

It occurs to you as you lay down next to her how much you’ve learned and changed and grown since meeting her. You can hear your song now, where before it was only an occasional note on a gentle breeze.

She’s had a rough night with a bad cold and you wish you could take her sickness away, but you can’t so you just pray for her as the song that always plays in your head becomes a lullaby, and you slowly drift back to sleep.

Thanks for the Memories

The last thing I remember doing with my dad is watching the season ending episode of Three’s Company back in May of 1984. The next day I got off the school bus and my sister was waiting to tell me he had a heart attack and take me to the hospital.

I don’t like that being my last good memory of him–watching some dumb sitcom. Neither of us liked the episode much. So I try to think of other things, like how strong he was. One time I saw him slide a dryer out of the back of his pickup with his bare hands. Heck, the day of his heart attack, he drove himself to the hospital. That probably bought him a day.

He loved to sail, and collect things, and listen to big band music.

I remember bringing him coffee on Saturday mornings, and running down to the little store around the corner to buy him a newspaper.

I remember he had a rifle in his closet that had a white stock, and a .22 revolver in a drawer.

He made me and my friends rubber band guns one time, and took 4 of us to see Jaws at the old Parkway Plaza theater.

I have two favorite memories of my dad that I cherish, and thinking about them now as I hold my 2 year old and watch Dora makes me realize how important it is I create memories for both of my guys

The first memory is this little routine we’d do as he went off to work (he was a cement mason). He’d say “see you later, alligator.” I would follow with “after a while, crocodile.” I loved that–it was something that was just ours.

The second was spending the night on his sailboat. We didn’t do it much, but when we did it was great. I remember the sound of the water slapping the sides of the boat, and the ding-ding of buoys or something out in the harbor. Then we would go to Jack-in-the-Box and get breakfast while it was still dark.

He might not have been Ward Cleaver, but he did what he could. I wish he could have met my kids–he was really good with them.

Anyway, I need to get busy with my guys. It’s Saturday, and we’ve got things to do!

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Change the World

If it were just me I needed to think about, I wouldn’t try to change the world. I’ve lived long enough and seen enough of how things always seem to be that I don’t really care what the world “does” to me. I’ve gotten a lot better at taking it.

Yet when I wake up in the morning and when I lay my head down at night I think of these people:

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Then I think that what really matters is them, and what I leave behind for them when I’m gone. When I think about them, apathy is no longer an option. I have to care about things because they look to me to learn how to do so much.

How to treat people.

How to treat each other.

How to treat the planet.

Things like that.

I may not want to be an example for anyone, but that almost doesn’t matter. I’ve got two people who need me.

I guess the best place to start is simply changing my own world first…

The End is the Beginning

We had a concert at FCC Wednesday night, and I was hoping it was going to be well attended because I figured if it was we (Yuma) would be more likely to have other shows come to town. I did a few easy things to help promote the event, but in the end the event was very poorly attended.

I blamed myself to an extent, because while I have no official position at the church I did have some very strong promotional inclinations I didn’t follow through on because I didn’t want to step on toes or make waves. Next time, I’m just going to do what’s necessary and risk breaking a few toes.

Regardless, there were probably only fifty or sixty people in our sanctuary, and at first it bummed me out. The cool part was that five of them were myself and my family, including David. I didn’t think the concert made much of an impression at first because all he said was that it “sure was loud.”

And at the time I was mainly thinking of the impression the band made on me with songs like:

and this:

For me, the show did exactly what it was supposed to: it made me feel a little closer to God than before I walked in, and took me to “that” place where worship and praise and Jesus all collide with the raw heart of a supplicant. It was awesome and moving and I made sure to tell the singer later how he’d kicked me in the nuts at least twice.

Then today happened. I had a whole day with just me and the boys, and for part if it I took David to the water park at the Fun Factory, and while we were driving around, we listened to the CD I’d purchased at the concert called “The End is the Beginning.” David said the title track was his new favorite song.

I love that his first concert was a family event at his own church (for the record, my first concert was Poco, at the Del Mar Fair when I was a kid). I love that Jen and I were there, and that today he asked if we could listen to Cloverton. He was singing along to The End… and also

So in the end, I’m glad Cloverton played our church, even if I am bummed that hardly anyone turned out to support it. I guess that tells me what age group most of our congregation falls into. In any case, the people who came were blessed, and I’m thankful for it. I hope we get other concerts; I’m looking forward to networking and trying new things. We shall see…