Category: Life

So it Begins

I’ve been getting a real sense of purpose about what to do with my…creative impulses over the past week or so. To tell you the truth, I’ve never really been afraid to write anything before, but I’m afraid of this.

The time commitment scares me.

The research scares me.

Potentially interviewing people scares me.

It all began with a post I retweeted from Rick Warren (read it here). It was extremely well done and not at all what I expected.

It made me think about a lot of things, not the least of which is how we who profess Christ represent him to the gay community. I wonder what they think of us?

What ideas do we have ingrained in our psyches about what gay men and women are like?

What are they like?

Where all this is going I don’t know, but when I read about Dan Cathy in that article it gave me pause about my own preconceived notions regarding LGBT people and how my personal interaction with them has been.

I realized I don’t know any gay people very well here, either at work or in my private life.

I realized the thought of gay people getting married does not make me feel threatened, and I’m really not sure how I feel (or ought to feel) about that.

I feel this issue and the controversy surrounding it is at least partly to blame for young people turning away from The Church (as a corporate entity) I don’t know what to do about that, and I’m not at all sure how this project will turn out in the end.

I only know I have to write it, and that as the saying goes, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Let Me Sow Love

I should be doing homework right now. I have to read this Ezra pound thing and write about it. I have a book I want to finish, and the other day I made a new character on Star Wars, the Old Republic I want to play more.

Right now, I can’t do any of that. I can’t think about doing any of that. I went literally from my knees to this chair in my hotel room and all I can think about is that Huffington Post thing I posted earlier about the prayer of St Francis–that ball started rolling last week when I watched this:

If you have a little over an hour to watch that video, I promise you, you will not regret it. Anyway, the shirt Nick is wearing in this video had the words “where there is hatred, let me sow love” across the chest. I hadn’t heard that before, and I wanted to know where it came from.

It’s from something called “The Prayer of St Francis,” which as the Huffpost article pointed out, was probably not written by St Francis, though he certainly lived his life in such a way he exemplified it. Before I go any further, here it is:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
To be understood, as to understand;
To be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
And it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen.

So I was sitting here at this little desk in my hotel room and I was just idly looking at the Ezra Pound piece and I felt the uncontrollable compulsion to spend some time talking to God. It wasn’t really a question of whether or not I wanted to or if I had something I’d rather be doing, it was more like

nownownownownownownownownownownow…………………

So that’s what I did. At the end of that time the words of the Prayer of St Francis came to me again, and they seemed to me more valid than ever, and an aspiration each believer should hold dear:

make me an instrument of your piece.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.

Not the whole prayer, just those two lines.

Is that for me, God? I asked myself that as I returned to my chair and opened up this window.

How can I be an instrument?

How can I be used in the furtherance of your kingdom? I am not an apologist. I am not a pastor? I haven’t been to seminary.

I’m just a man. I’m a man that sometimes doubts, and occasionally goes for days without reading his bible. I lapse into old thought patterns and old sin patterns. I swear more than I should. I misuse my gifts.

How can I be an instrument? Don’t you have someone more qualified? Someone who knows what to say to people and what to do?

Where is there hatred that I can do anything about?

God showed me my own family. Sometimes the people I work with. Sometimes even the people I worship with. Yes, even them. Just because people go to church doesn’t mean they cease to have the same problems everyone else does, and respond to others while they’re deeply in the throes of them in a way which is often less than faithful.

How do I sow love? I love these people (love as a verb, that is). I love them in spite of their wrongs, real or perceived. I love them even if I don’t want to. I love them like God would love them.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace…

Now I find myself in the position of beginning a task I am not comfortable with. It doesn’t matter that I feel there are other things I have to do. It doesn’t matter that I feel there are other things I am better or more skilled at than sharing love–sowing love–with others, others who need it most. Oswald Chambers says God cares not at all for our natural proclivities, and I think he is absolutely right. God doesn’t care what we’re good at, though he does bless us with talents. I think what Chambers is trying to say is that God doesn’t care if we think we’re good at something. He can and will still use us.

I can say I’m not good at talking to people about Christ. I can believe I’m not good at talking to people about Christ. I might not even be good at evangelizing people in the way others are.

Yet to deny that God can use me and use my story in spite of my shortcomings is to deny God himself.

Tonight I was given a glimpse of the task ahead, and it is daunting. I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t know how to do it. All I can think of to do right now is to pray these words, and trust God to supply everything else.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love…

My Northern Adventure

The first couple of days here were the worst. When we landed in Fairbanks it was -30ish Fahrenheit, and it was like nothing I’ve ever felt. We were as prepared as we could be, but there’s only so much you can do when it’s that cold. It’s colder than the inside of your freezer, colder than anything you can imagine. When we got up the next morning and were getting ready to leave the hotel in Fairbanks, we found out what happens to hot coffee in -40 degree temperatures:

It freezes before it hits the ground–it turns to vapor when it hits the cold air all spread out. It was amazing.

The other thing was the air itself. It’s so cold, breathing is…different. It feels strange to breathe; the air is that cold. It didn’t quite hurt, but if you had any moisture at all in your nasal passages you could feel it freeze, and that’s a really strange sensation. You wear a face mask because of the cold, and it gets ice crystals on it because of the moisture from your breath.

After those first couple days, it wasn’t so bad, temperature-wise. I think it was easier to acclimate to cold than it was to get used to the heat when I came to Yuma. I didn’t expect that at all. The other thing I did not expect was how beautiful everything was. My Goodness, I’d never seen anything like it, and probably never will again. It reminded me of the beginning part of the Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe–ice and snow everywhere. It was like being inside a snow globe, but infinitely colder. Just look at some of the things we saw. And this is only some–if you want to see more of the pictures, just look at my Facebook page.

more snowy trees 001more mountainsMountainsun

trees 2

trees 3

Trees

I also went ice fishing, and that was way more fun than I expected. I got to use a giant auger to drill holes in a frozen lake, and I even caught a few fish, all about the size of this monster here:

Ice fish

I had a moose burger, too. One of the test officers here said her sister had killed it not to long before. It was really good. Nicely seasoned, and freshly barbecued. Awesome beans, too:
moose burger

The thing I was most worried about was keeping myself together spiritually. I knew I probably wouldn’t be able to get to a church, and I was right. There was nothing nearby, and I didn’t want to drive around Delta Junction looking for one when it was all icy everywhere. Plus, I get lost going to the bathroom.

At first, it was really hard to maintain my spiritual discipline. We got up pretty early, so it was difficult to read or pray or journal early in the morning (much like it is at home). And I didn’t feel much like doing any of that when we got back to the hotel, either. So I mainly didn’t do anything in the way of devotional time.

Another problem was that one of my past…problems or…addictions as a single man was to look at certain types of things on the internet. I knew I’d be here with no one to hold me accountable but my own conscience, and that’s not really enough. So I messaged quite a bit with Zeb, and he mentioned this online MMO he played as a good way to kill time. I downloaded it and it pretty much did the trick. If I’m not watching a movie or doing homework on the computer, I’m usually playing Star Wars, the Old Republic. It’s pretty fun, even if I am not particularly good at it.

Still, I was having trouble reconnecting with God–and I fully knew the problem was me. God had not gone anywhere. Then there was this one day where someone had to stay with the test item while the soldiers went back for chow, and I told them I would do it. So it was that I was all by myself at this OP where there was nothing much around at all. I had a warmup room, so I was sitting in there on this little couch when I just started to pray, and ask God to show me something so that I could know he was there even if I wasn’t talking to him at that time. I needed to know that He was still God, was still on the throne. I hate that I got to that point, but it happened.

It wasn’t the first time, and it probably won’t be the last. So I prayed, and I listened to some worship music on my phone and then I got the sense I was supposed to go outside. It had just started snowing kind of softly, and it was about 2 degrees above zero. I looked around for a little bit and it just smacked me upside the head. God had not gone anywhere. He hadn’t moved at all. He was everywhere around me.

After that, things got better. Not perfect, because nothing is perfect. I just found a time and place where I could be alone with God for a little while when I got back from work. It wasn’t first fruits, but it was all kinds of better from what it had been.

The main struggle then was just missing these people:

Wilkins

I’m usually able to speak to Jen and the boys maybe once or twice a day. John called me this morning, as a matter of fact. Jenny said he grabs her phone and says “call daddy.”

Man, I can’t wait until next weekend. I miss them so dang much.

The thing I’ll most take away from this place isn’t the pay check, or the leftover per diem. It’s that one day at the OP when I realized that no matter where I was and no matter what was going on, God was still God, and always would be.

more mountains

There’s no way I can look at those places–or even those images of them–and think they could have been made by anything but God.

Stimulus and Response

When my older boy gets in trouble, he’ll go to any and all lengths to explain why it wasn’t his fault. He will happily throw anyone under the bus in order to divert any negative attention from himself. His mom and I are in the process of trying to teach him about responsibility (and accountability, for that matter).

What I’ve been thinking about lately is that so many people these days need to learn that lesson as well. God may well be creator, sustainer, beginning and end, but we have ultimate responsibility for our lives and the decisions we make.

We choose direction in our lives by how we respond to the circumstances that occur in it, whether they are positive or negative.

Concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl says:

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

I think that is so true. I would also say that how we respond affects the lives of others and not just our own.

Frankl also says

Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

That is also true. The other day I told my son about something that happened at work a couple years ago that very much could have affected our future, and certainly my ability to provide for my family.

I was driving to a remote test site down a dirt road, and I was last in a group of four or five trucks. Consequently, I was eating a great deal of dust. There was no wind and the dust just hung in the air. Everyone was also going very fast, and the main group began to pull away from me.

It was then several things happened at once. I realized I couldn’t see the sides of the road. I hit some bad washboards in the surface of the road and began to fishtail. I attempted to correct, overcompensated, and veered offroad, flipping my truck over and destroying a government vehicle.

That was bad. Had I not been wearing a seat belt, it could have been much worse.

I had to go before a review board and account for what happened. I could have tried to avoid blame and responsibility by blaming all sorts of things and people, but something told me not to, and I just told the truth: I was speeding, even though I couldn’t see well. How could I deny it was my fault?

I told my son (and I firmly believe) that what saved my job was that I accepted responsibility for my actions. The stimulus was the accident. My response was to be honest, even though I knew the cost could be great.

I’ve also been trying to admit to my son when I make mistakes, and to apologize when that is what’s needed. I think one of the larger problems these days is so many people have forgotten how to do that.

Rather, people blame their circumstances for things that happen in their lives, or to excuse the things they do. They blame parents, or teachers, or friends. They blame anyone rather than say, “Yes, I did it. I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry, please forgive me.”

We usually do not ask for the negative things that happen in our lives. We don’t have any control over the people that do or say hurtful things, or sometimes literally do hurt us.

But between the stimulus of what happens and the response we make lies a space…

We get to choose our response. With honesty and the acceptance of personal responsibility lies growth. With blame and denial lies stagnancy.

I think that’s where we are now as a society, as a generation.

Our place in life may not be our fault, and sometimes that place truly sucks. Or it could be completely different. Maybe everything is great.

It’s how we respond to those circumstances that determines the true course of our lives.

Life can and often will be so tough. Mine was, at times. I believe what brought me through it to the place I am now is the millennia-old sacrifice of a Nazarene carpenter a world away from Arizona.

I didn’t know much about Jesus at the time I was going through certain things. Yet when he brought healing to the person I am now he also brought healing to the person I was then.

Or think about it like this:

The stimulus was God saw what the world was becoming and had become. It was a fallen and often Godless place, and it needed something to change or all would be lost.

The world needed a savior (and it still does).

God’s response was to send his son as propitiation for the world’s sin and brokenness–for its fallen nature. That response gives us freedom.

If we look at the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalves as stimulus, I wonder how we will choose to respond?

Would that affect our willingness to accept personal responsibility for our actions (and reactions)?

I believe it would.

What would happen if we admitted our wrongs, or gave thanks for our “rights?”

What would happen if we were able to say “Yes, I did it. I’m sorry, please forgive me?”

Kids are Funny

David said school was early out today, and we thought that was 1130, so John and I showed up about 1115 to the school. We went inside to confirm the early out, and were told it was 130.

We had time to kill, so I took John to McDonald’s, where he showed no interest in his Happy Meal.

He seemed very interested in something on the ground, however.

20130111-121044.jpg

He sat his drink on the table and crouched down, and came up with this hanging out of his mouth:

20130111-121241.jpg

That’s right. A piece of old hamburger patty.

After jamming my fingers into his mouth to fish out the offending meat, he decided he was going to have a chat with the man next to us about the playground equipment.

He chattered like a monkey for almost a minute, and decided he was going to play with a Nintendo DS belonging to the man’s kid, who was about David’s age.

He chattered for another few seconds, the man picked up the DS and said “no habla ingles.”

John thought that was hilarious and started cracking up. He pointed at the man and said “funny.” Then pointed at the slide and said “funny slide.”

Kids….

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What We Forget

This morning I read a headline for an article on CNN.com that made me stop and think for a few minutes. What it said was “Dad Claims Sandy Hook Shooter’s Body.”

I read the article, but what it said didn’t really matter. The title alone was sad, and terrible. Perhaps to most people–including myself–not as sad as the parents claiming the bodies of first graders. As a parent of two small boys, what those parents must feel is unfathomable.

Yet the shooter’s dad had to claim the body of a dead son as well, and in some ways it almost seems just as bad. To him it probably is. Not only does he have a dead son, who by most accounts suffered from sort of mental condition (the level or name of which remains unknown), but he also has to wonder where he fell short as a parent, as a father.

The young man who did this terrible thing was once a first grader as well. He was once an infant, and his father cradled him in his arms, as I cradled my son just last night, and you have cradled your children at some point.

So his father grieves the loss of what he remembers, while also wondering what he could’ve done to stop it, or if he, personally is to blame.

What must that be like, to realize your son perpetrated such a monstrous act?

Let me say briefly that I am not addressing gun control or any political agenda here, but we can’t blame the father for what his son did. The blame lies with the killer. The guns he took from his mother aren’t responsible–he is. Saying otherwise is like saying jetliners are responsible for 9/11.

In any case, I pray the father of the killer is able to find some peace with himself and with God. I hope we as a body of people–Americans, fathers, mothers, human beings–can take something away from this terrible lesson.

Love your kids. Teach them to respect life. If your child is ill in some way–especially mentally–educate yourself all you can about what it is that ails them.

And be there for them, no matter what it costs you. We will never know what was in the killer’s troubled mind that brought him to a place where killing people seemed like the thing he should do.

As for me, I will do my best to make sure I’m available for my kids, to be a dad at any and all costs. What I will teach them I have posted about before, so for today just let me say that as horrible as the act was the Sandy Hook killer committed, his father still lost a son, and that’s sad.

I Wonder

Let me begin by saying I am no pastor. I am not a theologian, or apologist of any particular skill. I am just a man who believes, and I am a member of a congregation. As such, I’ve began to wonder a few things about “the church” as a collective body, not just the place I worship a couple times a week.

I wonder if sometimes we forget why we enter those doors, or why they’re even there in the first place?

I wonder if sometimes we sit in judgment on the people who walk through those doors, as if the things that bother us about them matter at all to God?

I wonder if sometimes we think so much about who signs the most checks in the offering plate we forget about the people who have no checks to sign that are right outside our doors?

I wonder if giving people what they expect from church can sometimes supersede giving Jesus what he deserves?

I wonder if we can change–as people and the body–to actually reach the people in our own backyards who are so broken and so jaded and hurt by the world they have no idea who Jesus is?

I wonder if we can ever grasp that while Jesus is the way, truth, and life, the worship methodologies we’ve grown accustomed to are not necessarily the only ones that can bring the proper measure of praise to God?

I wonder if we will ever understand the vernacular of our youth in such a way that we can acknowledge they can actually say something to God with it?

I wonder if we will realize that our preferred level of spiritual reverence is not the only one that exists?

I wonder if we can truly learn to love the sometimes unloveable?

I wonder if we can ever really be the hands and feet of Jesus if we don’t stop trying to please people and start trying to please God?

I wonder if we can remember that in a sense, we are all leaders in our respective churches?

That’s the real trick, at least it is for me. I represent the church, and not just my own church. I represent Jesus before people who have never heard the truth about him. Like it or not, I am a leader in the church. And as Northpoint Pastor Andy Stanley said, as leaders “we are not responsible for filling anyone else’s cup, we are responsible for emptying ours…”

I think if we all just focus on emptying our cups in worship and praise we will be on our way toward living in the fullness of Christ.

I wonder what would happen if we did that?

This young man here is emptying his cup…

Back on the Couch

It has taken me several days to process Friday’s events in Connecticut enough to get to a place in my head and my heart where I could write about it. I was in The Big Swirl frozen yogurt shop with John when I saw something on Twitter about a shooting.

Just then John tried to go behind the counter so we took off and headed over to GameStop to look for some Xbox accessories for David. John decided that would be a great place for a power dump, and it wasn’t until after I changed him that I sat in my car and read the story in full.

The magnitude of the tragedy was simply breathtaking, and I struggled to get my mind around it. What could have happened in this young, young man’s head that he could murder a class full of first graders?

In my mind I saw their faces as he came through the door, probably looking up in curiosity. As a parent my mind immediately went to my own third grade son sitting in his classroom, and two the toddler I’d just buckled into his car seat.

I wanted to be angry at the boy (because that’s really what he was) who had done this evil (because that’s it was), and I even expected to be mad at God for allowing it to happen but all I could feel to this very cold Sunday morning is a sadness so profound it coils in my guts like sickness. I think CS Lewis had it right when he said “no one ever told me grief felt so much like fear…”

I feel a grief of a level I haven’t felt since I was a teenager when I lost my parents and a good friend in my 16th, 17th, and 18th years. I didn’t know how to grieve that loss, and I don’t know how to grieve this one.

Clearly I didn’t know any of those children, but I grieve for them just the same. I grieve for their families. I grieve for what could have been. I grieve for the loss of so much innocence all at once.

I grieve for the teachers and faculty who died trying (some successfully and some not) to protect their students. I grieve for their families.

I grieve for the family of the murderer as well. The love they felt for the killer is no different than what the parents of the murdered children feel. Plus, this young man’s father has to live with what his son did and wonder where he fell short for the rest of his life.

I grieve for the country I love as well, because I feel this tragedy will not pull us together but further apart. It will be gun control vs gun owners and it will not stop.

I grieve because I know something like this will happen again.

I don’t blame the gun, or the killer’s mother for owning the ones used that morning. I don’t blame God or anyone else. God didn’t pull the trigger so many times Friday; a man did. I’m not going to get into the gun control debate today and maybe not at all, but I will say this (and I grieve the loss of my own innocence as well):

I own a gun. I bought it to shoot at targets. I have no plans to shoot any living thing.

But I would put a hundred bullets into the young man who did this thing to protect even a single child and I would be able to live with myself.

I read an excellent post by Morgan Freeman (find it on the Internet) which apportioned blame to media influenced sensationalism and I think that’s true, but not the only truth.

I think we’re failing our kids on a regular basis. So many have lost the idea that life is precious, and what binds us to it is little more than gossamer thread. Violence and violent imagery is ubiquitous. We expose our kids to it and we expose ourselves to it. It makes me despair for people. It makes me think there’s nothing to be done for the world. It makes me think there’s nothing anyone can do, the world is speeding to a sad and inevitable end.

It makes me think there is no hope.

There is hope, and that hope came to earth two millennia ago in a humble and quiet manner.

The hope for humanity is in the form of an obscure Nazarene carpenter who wore humanity for 33 years before dying for it. Our hope is not in a victory that can be achieved by strength of arms, though it is by blood.

We can’t change the hearts of our children, but we can tell them about who can. We can teach them to love like Jesus did. We can teach them every single life means something. We can teach them of the quiet heroism of school teachers and janitors.

I think if we just pour love into our kids then maybe we have a chance against this sort of thing.

Back to this morning. John woke up at 0600, and I brought him out to the couch. I skimmed through Twitter and Facebook, reading news stories about the shooting and people’s status updates about their lives, which carried on. Mine will, too.

Then I saw a picture, and it just wrecked me. It was a painting, really, on a post that was a poem with the rhyme structure and meter of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.’

In the painting, Jesus sat in a classroom surrounded by children, and a teacher was reading to her students from a children’s book.

There will be more pictures in the days to come. Many words will be spoken and written, and not all of them will be loving.

I think the thing to remember is that everyone grieves differently, and we should allow them that. Some will cry, some will pray, some will be angry. Some will curse God or call for the weapons of all gun owners.

We need to let people process their grief in their own way, and then we can move on.

We need to talk about a lot of things.

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Finding Our Night-Night Place

Here I am again on the couch. John woke up at 430, exactly when I did–maybe he heard my alarm. I get up that early so I have time to have breakfast, and throw lunch together or take a shower. More importantly, that’s my morning devo time.

Well, trying to get a semi-fussy toddler back to sleep precludes all but the last of those things. And so it was that I ended up in my spot with a baby on my shoulder, and talking to God.

I spoke softly, but I did pray aloud, and it wasn’t until he heard the sound of my voice that John stopped squirming and started going back to sleep.

I think we do that, too. Sometimes life makes us squirm–life, in all its messiness with all its pitfalls and all its pain.

We get so caught up in whatever is going on it’s hard to calm down. This morning John needed a few things to calm him down and get him back to his “night-night” place. Sometimes we need that, too.

I think most of all, it was the sound of a calming voice (I prayed over him and sang softly into his ear) and the feeling of comfort that comes from feeling daddy’s arms.

That’s what we need, too, sometimes. We need to hear daddy’s voice and feel his love.

I think that looks and feels a little different for everyone. With some people, that love manifests through reading scripture. For others, it comes from hearing his voice through song, or from the gentle breeze of his voice through prayer, or maybe some other way.

It’s different for everyone.

The world and our troubles can fall away when we allow ourselves to hear from our abba, however he speaks to us.

So amazing when that happens. This morning, it happened for John, and for me through a fussy baby. The night before, I got to carry David back to his bed (won’t be able to do that much longer!). Anyway, I won’t get back to my night-night place until after practice tonight, unfortunately.

My Alabaster Jar

I woke up this morning (way too early, thanks to John), and I was still thinking about church last night. Specifically, the music. Perhaps it was that in conjunction with a video I watched earlier in the day:

(Zeb posted this a month or so ago. It inspired me then and inspires me now)

I watched that again yesterday afternoon while Jen was getting her toes did, and I was still thinking about it when we got to church and Jorge sang this song during communion:

I started thinking about truly dedicating my life to something, and what that actually meant.

here I am, take me…

When I got married, I dedicated the rest of my life to being with my wife in all circumstances, forsaking all others. I think it is very much like that when you offer yourself and your service (such as it may be) to Jesus.

I suppose that’s why the church is often referred to as “the bride of Christ.”

I tell myself that my natural affinities would not be useful to Jesus, and that he would never be able to use me for anything of consequence. This morning I realized Jesus doesn’t much care for our natural affinities. If we ask him to use us, he will.

A single lyric from this song popped into my head when that last sentence ran through my mind:

here I am, God, use me, set me aflame

I don’t have much to offer. I don’t have anything of worth. I’m no preacher, no evangelist. I’m getting a little long in the tooth, and lots of things hurt in the morning.

But I don’t want to waste another second of my life taking salvation for granted and serving my own ends first.

here I am, take me…