A Declaration

e.e. cummings wrote like no one else.  In all my studies of English Literature I have yet to find a poet who creates with words as he did.  There are some authors who are eternal, who’s words create such life that they are transcendent of time and space, much like all things that are Good. And as I read more and more I am convinced that the beauty of the Glory of God is present in all stories, no matter who wrote them.  All reflect the Image of God because His Image is above all and in all and through all.

A poem written by cummings comes to mind often, and today is no exception.  Today when all seems possible, even though nothing for which I am hoping is yet tangible.  I spent a lot of days praying ways I thought I should have prayed.  Hours praying things that someone prays when they don’t know any better.  I have even prayed words found in Scripture, hoping that my middle of the road faith would please God unto keeping me in the middle of the road.  And so it is, this is where I lived.  For so long.

You see, I am convinced that God meets us where we are until we ask for more.  I am convinced that the reasons why Jesus answered questions with questions and vague statements was to reveal to the one questioning the answer that was already present.  CS Lewis (why do so many good authors use initials? TS Eliot.  EE Cummings.  EA Poe.  JRR Tolkien.  Perhaps I should start going by MP O’Donnell.  Perhaps not.  It always sounded too much like I was in military law enforcement.  But I digress) wrote a paradigm shattering book called ‘Till We Have Faces, a myth retold about the questions we place before God and the answers we don’t want to hear but have known in our hearts all along.  In it, the one telling the story loses the one person most precious and beautiful to her.  And it is the gods who have taken her sister away.  So with great determination she journeys to the home of the gods, where she is given an audience with them. She asks her question with indignation and great pain in her voice. She has a right to be angry. She has a right to express the depth of her loss.  But the answer she is given breaks it all down and washes it all away even as it is given to her in the fullest sense.  I will not tell you what happens, nor will I tell you to read it, for it is a story, like all god stories, that must find you.  If you hear it calling your name, follow the path.

I will say that the answer she is given is much of her question turned back to her.  And this is the way Jesus often answered people.  So many people read the words of Jesus with confusion and frustration.  This happened as well to the rich young man.  He wasn’t upset because the answer disappointed him.  He was upset because he wasn’t fully listening to his question.  Two things Jesus said repeatedly have had such a profound echo in my heart, and a deep impact on my spirit.  One is when He said “I tell you the truth.”  This should speak for itself.  Truth is telling you something that is true, and alerting you to pay attention to the fact that it is true.  There can be no mistaking, misinterpreting, or missing the words that follow then.  The other thing He said often was “It is as you say,” or some other form of those words which carried the same meaning.  What was His point?  That we carry within us the same power He had when He spoke the world into existence.  Words matter.  Don’t believe me?  Try getting something to work after you have damned it.  Like the lawn mower that won’t start.  Or the recipe that won’t fix itself.  Or the relationship you have sabotaged by gossip.

Or the child you tore down with your curses.  You’ll never.  You’re worthless.  You can’t.  That was stupid.  I can’t win with you.  You are driving me crazy.

Tell yourself you can’t, and you won’t.

Tell yourself you will, and watch what steps you take to get there without even realizing that is what you are doing.

It is as you say.

So we approach God this way.  We come to Jesus with our questions.  Jesus why can’t I…?  It is as you say.
I grew up under the banner of a very small god.  A god who keeps score.  A god who will only bless the certain, and who punishes the guilty.  A god who cares nothing for the everyday if it is beyond the borders of what we defined in our theology.  A god who made the poor poor, who cared not for them because of choices they had made to become poor.  A god who lived in as much fear as we did.  Fear that we would say the wrong thing.  Do the wrong thing.  Expect the wrong thing.  A god who had it all written in unchangeable granite that hung around our necks as a reminder of the great lengths he went to save us from our pitiful selves.  A god who approached us because no one else would and somebody had to and well, that’s just what he does because he can’t deny his character but you better never forget how unworthy you are.

And so it was as they said.

He fit so neatly into that box that many never saw him as anything else.  Because it was as they said.

And this is where He meets us.

Creation, at the same time, is full of the endless and limitless expressions of the God of Jacob. He has stopped at nothing to reveal Himself to us in all things.  The question is are we listening. Are we paying attention.  Are we bold enough to say, like Moses, Show me Your glory?  And then bold enough to expect a response?  A response that matches the request, no less, and not a response that is driven to fear and loathing.  Are we bold enough to acknowledge the stranger by the side of the river who is waiting for an all night wrestling match, to acknowledge that He has come to grapple with man, and to enter the ring, to sweat and to tumble and to grit His teeth in the dirt He made, and to last the night arm in arm in a tangled mess of humanity, to receive the call for a blessing in all its audacity and shameful boldness, and then to actually bestow the blessing before leaving that place?

He is all around us.  Still we choose the boxes that will only fit our understanding of Him at the time.  And still He allows us to fit Him in so that we can carry around an idea that makes us more comfortable in our self deceit.

It is as you say.

I have renounced those prayers I made in the past.  I have taken them back for a new way to pray instead.

I am choosing today to enter the ring.

It will be impossible.

I have a very important calling.  I am entrusted to teach the life changing power of story with students who have no hope.  Who live in extreme poverty.  Who don’t know their name, and certainly don’t know that they have a calling.

I have a family of five beautiful children.  I am hoping for more, as the Lord has laid it on my heart that He will increase.  The fifth will be with us any day, even any moment now, and even as I anticipate this birth, I understand that this is the beginning of more.  So much more, in so many ways.

I am a writer and an artist.  It is not a stretch to say that I hope to change the world, or at least some part of the world, with the stories I have to tell.  This has been a consistent answer to the prayer “What do You want for me to do?”

I want to bless as many people as I meet along the way.  I want to share bread with them, and share stories with them about what redemption means, and what Hope looks like.  Stories of Grace and Beauty and Mercy.  I want a big house with a lot of room for a lot of stories to be told.  I want pantries full of food that will feed a lot of people who come to the table I have been given to feed their hearts as well as their stomachs.

I want Grace upon Grace.

I want to trust God with incredible things that only He can do, things that He has put me on earth to do in order that many may see and believe.

I have wrestled God by the river.  I know I will be there again.  I have met him on the mountain where I have offered to sacrifice that which was most precious to me.  I have found Him in the winepress where I was hiding from who I am until He called me forth.  I’ve met Him in addiction.  In despair.  In hopelessness.  In thoughts of suicide.  In loss.  In having nothing but what I could hold in my hands and the people who were at the table eating all that we had left.  In betrayal and in heartache.  I’ve met Him on a hill far away.

And I have seen Him in the tomb.

I have seen Him emerge from the tomb.

And how He did the same work in me.

And now I have a declaration to make.

I have thrown away the boxes, and I have burned the banner under which I expected Him to come.

I am asking Him to bless me, and to bless me immensely, increasingly, abundantly.  I am asking Him to increase the scope of influence that He gives me, that I may tell the stories I have to tell to thousands who would glorify His name.  I am asking Him for His touch of greatness.  To fill me and to flow through me.  To give me those things that only He can give that I may accomplish the things He has put on my heart.  I am asking that He keep me from the influence of the enemy, that I may do good and not harm.

And the boldest decision of all:  I am expecting Him to come through.

In all my searching I have learned to trust my heart.  It is not an animated sentimentality.  It is the very heart He gave me when He formed me from the dust.  So I will trust that it is Good, because He said it was good when He made it, and I come into agreement with that.  He has never let me down.  And beyond that, He has only done exceedingly abundantly more than I could hope or imagine.

For years I lived with an assumption of who God was.  Because of His Grace He allowed me to see Him there.  But as I search for Him I learn that He desires to disappear so that I may search for Him in new places, to see Him as He is, to never stop finding Him in all His fullness.  He is the beauty of the story, the treasure worth finding again and again and again.

How big is your God?

Are you willing to let Him disappoint you?

For however you choose to see Him, He will make Himself known to you.

My prayer today is from the heart of David, who’s heart, I am told, is much like the heart of God.

In Jehovah doth my soul boast herself, Hear do the humble and rejoice.
Ascribe ye greatness to Jehovah with me, and we exalt His name together.
I sought Jehovah, and He answered me, and from all my fears did deliver me.
They looked expectingly unto Him, and they became bright, and their faces are not ashamed.
Psalm 34

I am praying for all seven of us, as a family, that we look expectingly to Him, and we will become bright.  Our faces are not ashamed.

As for e.e., his words echo today.  There is boldness and awareness in his poem.  I think it captures what my soul would have to say today.

I thank you, God, for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any – lifted from the no
of all nothing – human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened.)

The Call and Response

So often we think of life in linear fashion.  Minutes and hours and days and weeks, like life must move along a track that we have laid out for it.  If it follows the track, all will be well, even when things are not okay.  Lay down enough track, and time will have healed all things.  If we were on a train, this might be helpful.  It’s difficult, after all, to think about the terrible time in Cleveland when the train is now pulling in to Chicago.

But life is not as linear as we think.  The One who made it is not bound by the parameters we have agreed upon in our measuring of the universe.  It is a testament to Grace that we are allowed such parameters.  All things do not fit into the world of men, and yet He has caused all things, even Himself, to be fit into the world of men.  Even as they surpass and are beyond.  

Life is so much more a conversation.  A word spoken in the hopes of a word to be answered.  This is how all things began.  A word into the chaos.  A word into the darkness.  And the chaos responded.  The light responded.  And all things respond.  

The Story is the continued conversation that exists among and between all things.  I am convinced that we are all sharing in the same conversation.  Many of us are ignoring our part, and often the words that are spoken by others.  Not the things that they utter with their mouths.  But the things they are really saying.  I had a conversation with a friend yesterday about the words of orphans.  How we often do not listen to the stories they have to tell.  But oh, if we did.  How would the conversation change then?  How would the world change?  If we heard the words of the fatherless.  If we listened to the words of the forgotten.  Some of us are listening, but we cannot hear.  

Abraham was a man who listened.  He heard a word regarding a promise.  And so, he joined the conversation.  There were talks filled with starry skies, and sand on the shore.  Stories of descendants, and multitudes of the blessed.  Words about a land, and a hope, and a blessing for all people.  The conversation would continue throughout eternity.  Many have listened, and heard, and added their voice as well.  Some have yet not.  The conversation with Abraham went to some amazing places.  Some were scary.  Like the day on the mountain.

The morning began with a conversation, a call waiting for a response.  This is the beauty of conversation.  One must initiate.  Then the other must receive, and respond.  The one who initiates has no guarantee that there will be a response.  And so one waits.  This One, who called Abraham, often waits longer than any one else.  

But Abraham responded.  And I love his words – Here am I.  He didn’t say yes.  He didn’t call back by name.  He didn’t ask what was wanted.  He declared himself by declaring himself present.  Here am I. No place to hide.  No reason to.  And in reality, no where for him to hide.  The God of all things, who sees and knows all calls to Abraham.  It is not to find him.  It is for Abraham to find himself in the conversation, his place in the story.  

Abraham.

Here am I.

Then the conversation got scary.  He was told to go up the mountain to offer sacrifice.  But no ram was along.  No goat was taken.  He was to bring his son.  The promise.  The reason.  The hope.

Cruel and unusual.  The God who had not ever asked for human sacrifice before.  The God who would some day demand it as atonement for all that was broken.  Two things converging at once.  Impossible, but somehow more than acceptable.  Atrocious, but somehow within the parameters.  Beyond what could be imagined, but so much more than ever conceived.  

Take.  Your son.  Up the mountain.

To be killed as a sacrifice.

The Call.  And then Abraham’s response.

He went.  Without words, at first, but the conversation continued nonetheless.   And then his son joined in.  ”Father” he called.  And Abraham said once again, “Here am I.”  Present in the conversation.  Aware of his place in the story.  Serving, somewhat, as a go between among his son and the One.  Isaac asked the difficult question, and his father gave an answer based on the conversations he had before.  God will provide the ram Himself.  The conversation he had with the One, out in the starry night, about the sand on the shore, about the land and the promise and the blessing, it could not end here.  Abraham believed because he was present, and because he knew his place in the story, even as I am sure he wasn’t fully convinced.  

So many conversations take place like this one.  Because we are afraid, we fail to answer.  We do not respond when there is a call.  We do not know our place in the story.  

Today, I am thinking about a conversation that was not answered with words.  It is much like the conversation in which Abraham found himself.  It is a conversation that has always been, in fact, the only one.  This one also between a father and son, and among all others.  It was started long before any of us were.  And they both knew how it would go before it started.

The father told the son that something was broken.  Together they would have to fix it, for things that have been made should be made right.  The son agreed, and knew that as he would climb the mountain a lamb would be provided.  

So he climbed the mountain.

And he was the lamb. 

And while he was laid upon the altar, he cried out to his father.  

Father.  This is not the way it should be.  But is the way we decided upon.  And so it is supposed to be,  but it is not supposed to be.   It has been undone, but now it is finished.  Father.  Why.  

The conversation continued, but there were no words. 

This image, this conversation, suspended in the midst of all things, was, and is, and has become, a call. An opening to a conversation.  There was no response that day when the son cried out, except the response that silence is.  

So, now it begs the question.  If He did not respond, will you?

His father did not answer so that you can join the conversation.  You can find your place in the story.  

Life is much less linear than we should think.  And the silence still hangs in the air over the cross, waiting for a response.   

 

But it will not steal your substance

I’ve been shaken before.  The kind of shaking that takes all that is familiar and wrestles it to the ground.  The parts of me that didn’t cry uncle are the parts of me that remain.  The others have fallen away with the passing of all that does not belong.  It was a violent treatment at times.  Fear sometimes got the best of me.  Panic would come without warning.  Depression came and sat for a long time, and would not be excused for any reason.  And I’m pretty sure that for a while there I almost lost my mind.

But, as it has been written, when the time comes for that to be shaken which can be shaken, then only that which is unshakable will remain.  

This is Good.

And I thought that it would all be that way in the future, that whenever the Author needed to clean house He would bring me personal battles where I had to stare down my own demons, and I would battle through fear and insecurity and find some profound illumination and be restored.

But I must have known that somewhere there would be a changing of the guard.  

Last year about this time I was celebrating my son’s birthday, and raising a pint with friends to celebrate the Patron of Ireland.  And as that day came to a close there was something else.  Something different. Something much less familiar than anything I had experienced before.

As it settled in, I understood the reality.  There was no fear this time.  Only grief.  Only heart rending grief.
Leanne said she had cramping.  Then she began to bleed.  And then I knew that we were saying goodbye to a child who already had a name.

I remember hearing a friend say that a miscarriage was the hardest thing he had ever gone through.  I heard his pain, and I grieved with him.  But I didn’t understand.  I didn’t have anything with which to frame that grief.  Now I do.  And he was right.  Was he ever right.

Through the year that has turned on the calendar since then, I have found myself holding Him at arms length.  He was there as it happened, as if someone came to sit with us as death passed the time that night. Like a physician who walked us through an unstoppable process.  It was clear to me then.  That night passed slowly, and swiftly at the same time.  A broken heart is like that.  Some things you just have to let pass, no matter how slowly, as they move on to do what they are meant to do.  I felt her slipping away from us, and into His presence.  They were in it together, it was so real to me that they were in it together.  He gave us her name just a week before.  It was to remind us, to remind me, of something that I had forgotten.  And I heard her voice that day I found her name.  My heart leaped with joy, and I heard her laughter.
I heard her again that night, telling me that there was no more.  That this was it.  Seven weeks old, in the womb.  And she would be heading back to the place from which she had come.  And I remember how much I wanted to hold her.  Not to keep her here with me, with us, although I very much wanted that.  But to make sure that she made it well.  Like she needed her dad to hold her through it.  So much more that her dad needed her to hold him.  I wanted to see her through.  She was slipping away from us, and I wanted to see her through.
He was there with me then.

But then I turned away.  I refused, in my own way, to let Him fully in.  I told many of His great love, and how much He is worthy of trust.  But I refused to let my own heart trust Him.  I did not think I was angry with Him.  Instead I was only afraid.  I believed very much the things that I said of Him.  Nothing I have spoken or written has been false in any way.  Somehow my heart has known what will come around again.  Like a lover who is angry at the other for a time, for a reason, good or no, who knows the character of the one he loves, regardless of the wounding that comes from intimacy, and who will eventually come around again.  

I had to admit to myself that I was that one.  Holding Him at arms length.  Then even further than that.  It wasn’t until I was writing to my sister that I realized what was in my heart.  It was on the page before I knew what it said.  I had not reconciled myself to Him in this one thing.  And when I was able to see that, and to accept that, and then to embrace that, so important to embrace these things of Life, then I was able to have freedom.  And I heard Him agree with my freedom.  It was fashioned by Him.  It was given to me, and I became aware of that reality.  And He agreed with me.  

Some things we are not meant to get over.  And that is perfectly how it should be.  Why should we try to get over those things that shake us so deeply, affect us so greatly, wound us, even.  We forgive when it is needed, we release those in bondage, we are not victims.  We hold not against another.  But we do not get over.  It has become a part of us.  I have learned this much in these things to be true: that I loved my wife, and I knew her in the most intimate way, and because of our love, because of our knowing, because of life we’ve been given, we were granted the joy and the honor and the privilege of joining with Creator and bearing forth life.  All of this is risk.  All of it.  All of it.  To live is to risk.  To have life is to have risk at every turn.  There are no guarantees.  Hope without guarantees.  This is life.

This is purpose.

This is passion.

This is what I lost.  

And then, in losing, this is what I found.

I have been praying, even as recently as today, for purpose.  What is my purpose?  What is my passion, and where did it go?  

And so, as He does, He answered me.  He took away life. But that is for Him to do.  And I rejoice in that. In Him.  Life Giver, you also take away.  And  it.  Is.  Good.  It is Good.  And I can say, and I will say, that it is Well within me.  It is Well without me.  It is Well behind and before, and above and over me.  For You are Good, and You are Life, and Life is Good, with all that it asks and risks and gives and takes.  It is Good.

So I know now that which drives me, an answer to a question I have been asking for five years now with all of the seriousness of a man who has lost something so precious that he would go and sell all that he has for the finding of the treasure in the field.  I have gone and sold all that I have.  And I have also had much taken from me by those who did not bother to stop and ask the why and the how that friendship is built upon.  

But now, I hold in my heart that which is far greater than anything with a price.  He is no fool, said Jim, who gives what he cannot keep.

And my daughter, the one whom I lost, but really the one whom I have found, her life remains.  She came to remind me of something so great that it was told on a mountainside on a silent night in Bethlehem.  It was something spoken of in every story ever told, the greatest promise we have.

Now I know my purpose and my passion.

All is lost.  All is found.

 

Backhanded History

Heard a distant echo today.

It was the sound of an old friend’s voice, a friend that I had to let go of on this journey.

His voice came to me from the living room of my old self.  It’s no surprise to me that I was sitting on that couch today.  It’s difficult for us to let go sometimes.

I was speaking to him out of a heart that was damaged.  An incident of betrayal and abandonment.  I had heard him speak of the same things before.  Our stories were paralleled in many places, so it was natural that our friendship was what it was.

As I shared my heart, he tore it down.

“Shouldn’t you be over that by now?  It’s time to move on.  You’d figure by now you would know who you are.”

I’d figure.

By now.

But what is time?

This journey must need more of our full attention than we give it.  I have spent time ignoring what each day brought in order to focus all of my energy on the journey.  In so doing I failed to realize that the everyday was part of the journey.

Then I focused all my energy on the everyday, ignoring the longings and the questions that still clamored inside of me.  I was exhausted and unprepared for wounds as they surfaced.

Now, I think I will embrace them both.  I will look for Grace in the moment, in the everyday, and I will wrestle with God as the questions arise.

No, to answer the original question.  I am not over it yet.  Shouldn’t that be the point?
Shouldn’t that be where the Grace resides?

This is something called a Journey.  I am still figuring out which version of the map I need.  I am still choosing my companions for the trip.  I am certainly not packed with all that I could take.  And who is to say that I need my compass rather than my knife?  This is a beautiful mess.  This is embracing all that Is.

To seek, to strive, to find, and not to yield, said Tennyson.  All the while drinking life to the lees.

The journey is messy.  It is unorganized.  For all of God’s Sovereignty and Order, He often resides while hovering over the Chaos.  Brooding and Creating while it is taking shape.  If I bear His Image, and if my flesh and my heart may fail, then there should be no excusing the mess as the Masterpiece is made.

I am become a Name.

To that end I shall seek.

For my heart doth show itself violent

Five years ago I began to move away from all that is familiar.  Conversations and moments over a plate of food mark the landscape of those first few months of some sort of awakening.  I didn’t know what I was shrugging against, or trying to shrug off.  I was stuck in the Ordinary World of the Hero’s Journey.

There is a terrible thing about Grace that is not taught on felt boards in Sunday school classrooms.  When they say that it’s enough they don’t add that it’s enough to risk outdoing itself.  Grace can make one undone.  Grace can dismantle even as it rebuilds.  Grace is a fierce and fantastic beauty, piercing deeper and cutting more sharply than any two edged sword.  Grace provides for the journey to all that is Heaven, yes.  But Grace also provides for all that is the journey to Hell, whether we make it back, or no.

Grace stands off at the edges of what is clearly seen, like an apparition that is more solid than the ground we stand on.  Illuminated from behind she casts a shadow over us.  She covers, she cares, she nurtures and she restores.  Also, she doesn’t do any of these things.

This is the wonder and the mystery of Grace.  She knows the end result, because she was there when it was Won. She paid the wages.  She mortgaged the Kingdom in order to pay the debt.  This was the willing act of Grace.  There was nothing false, or mistaken, or accidental about it.  Grace is the strongest bond, the mightiest grip, the coldest steel, the brightest fire, the most profound of Truths.

Grace is the loudest silence.

Grace is the solution for which all questions seek.

And She is the question that haunts the most fearful of ways, and echoes the longest cry, and for the reply, we would wait for all time.

This is what was slamming into walls over those plates of food when this journey began.  The Call to Adventure is a pivotal moment for the Hero of the Journey.  But it is a moment which sets in motion all other moments to follow.  This is where the existentialists may be right.  And this is another thing about Grace.  She makes room at the table, because they all borrow Her recipe.  She wrote it on their hearts before they ever took a breath.

The grace I grew up in was not grace at all.  This grace was born under authority.  It was the bastard child of Theology and knowledge, reared by the nursemaid Doctrine, cultivated by the school master Fear, and approved of by the guardians of Evangelical tradition.

I have spent these five years picking through the rubble, polishing copper that I may find something of Grace hidden beneath.  I have found her.  Because She never remains hidden for long.  But I have found her in spite of, rather than because of.  I have found her because She is Grace, not because those previous ways pointed me to Her.  I found her because She must be found.  She must be answered.  A reckoning must be given.  Hers is the Question to which all questions bow.  Hers are the answers to which all answers must give account.  Hers is the Story that all stories must follow.

And this again is more of Grace.  That no matter how far any other path goes from Her home, she allows them to go.  That no matter how broken the words as they stumble out to deny her, or to redefine her, or to hem her in, she catches them one by one, and puts them back in order.  The Words matter.  They always have.

Because She wrote them.

Grace allows for the fear to exist.

Graces lets the monsters win.

Grace keeps the clock ticking.

Grace lets the arrogant parade about.

Grace lets the fires burn even longer.

Grace marks out a place for doubt.  Discouragement.  Abandonment.  Questioning without authority.  Blasphemy.
Heresy.

Grace makes room for error.

Then Grace wrecks the house and builds a new one.

She is always Present.  Whether I would will Her there, or would wish her away.

I cannot fall from Her.  I cannot escape Her.

She made that clear when this journey began.  She was, after all, the One who called me.

There is more to say about this, but not for today.  The Words will find me when I need them next.

As a dream from awakening, O Lord, in awakening, their image Thou despisest. For my heart doth show itself violent, and my reins prick themselves, and I am brutish, and do not know. A beat I have been with Thee.
And I am continually with Thee, Thou hast laid hold on my right hand.
With Thy counsel Thou dost lead me, and after honor dost receive me.

Whom have I in the heavens? And with Thee none have I desired in earth.
Consumed has been my flesh and my heart, the Rock of my heart and my portion is God to the age.

For lo, those far from Thee do perish, Thou has cut off every one, who is going a whoring from Thee.

And I, nearness of God to me is good, I have placed in the Lord Jehovah my refuge, to recount all Thy work.

Yeah, but why?

The adventures of a house full of kids.

I decided to get the kids some physical education this past Sunday, so I told them I would take them to the Y for a swim. Originally it was to be Hudson and Kellen and me, but I decided that I would take Macie as well.  Graham was asleep, and Leanne was laying down with baby in belly. It was a perfect opportunity to go.
Every time I go to the Y, I check the pool schedule. It is about as organized as something that is really unorganized, so it’s difficult to remember. I pick up a schedule and bring it home at least once a week just to be sure I can remember the open swim times. Sundays are from 3-4:30 in the afternoon. I know I probably don’t need to specify the P.M., but you just never know. Heavens, can you imagine swimming with three kids 8 and under that early in the morning? With the way the schedule is at our Y? I guess anything’s possible. But I digress.

I went by myself and got a quick workout in, then drove the 5 minutes up the hill to our house and told the kids to get ready. I had just, and I mean JUST enough time to get them ready and out the door so that we could make it back to the pool for a 30 minute swim.  I made sure of it.  I planned it just right.  I even had my workout timed perfectly. This is how it went down:

I walked in the door, went immediately downstairs, and made the formal announcement.  ”Get your suits, we are going swimming at the Y.”

“Yay!” was the consensus among the populous.
I was clear in my instruction to bring dry clothes to change into when we were finished.  And for Macie to pack her suit, which we did, so that she could get dressed there.
Hudson got his suit on, and was getting things together to be able to but dry clothes on when we were done. I packed my suit, and went upstairs to get some towels.

Then.

Kellen came upstairs in his bathing suit.

Ready to go.

Without any shoes.  Or a shirt.  And certainly no coat.

It’s January.  In Colorado.  At altitude.

“Dude.  You need clothes” said I.

“They’re in the bag” said Kellen, in a reassuring You-should-know-that-already-dad-I-thought-this-one-through tone.

“Kellen, it’s the middle of Winter and we have to GET to the pool.  It’s not in the basement.”

Pause from Kellen for a moment’s reflection.

“Yeah, we don’t have time for standing and thinking about it.  Go get dressed.”

Okay.  Still JUST enough time if he hurries.  Hudson is ready, in the kitchen, shoes on, coat, etc.  Where’s Macie?

I called downstairs for her.

“Coming dad!”

Great.  We’ll pull this off. We’ll get in the car, and by the time we get the car stared, Kellen will be “Macie what happened?”

She’s in the kitchen wearing her suit.

Following Kellen’s lead.  No shoes.  No shirt.  Certainly no coat.

“I put my suit on.”

Ask a four year old a clear, simple question to which there is a definite answer, and they will provide you with a simple, clear answer that is definitely not what you meant by the question.

“You can’t go outside like that, Mae.  You have to….Go talk to mom.  I can’t take you now because we don’t have time to (Macie starts crying.  Loud.  Clear.   Like Hello Kitty just bought the great litter box in the sky.)

Wow.  Not only are we going to have to shrink our swimming time, but now I feel like father of the year.

I found Macie’s rain boots by the door on my way out.  Ran to get Macie.  Put the boots on quickly.  Put her in the car, and handed her her coat.

“Put this on and get buckled while I get in the car.”

Ok-Kay!  Kids in car.  Crying reduced to sniffles.  Dad calming down.  Let’s go swim!  Have some fun!

At the Y.  Into the locker room, and help Macie into her suit.  Boys are ready.  I am ready.  Macie’s ready.

Stop by the showers and rinse down before entering pool area.

Now we are all wet, and cold.  But the pool is warm.

“Guys, let’s put our towels down and go get some vests.”

Wait a minute.

What did they just say?

“Hold on kids.”

“Excuse me, miss lifeguard?  What was that announcement?”

“Oh, yeah, the pool’s closing right now for swim team practice.”

“But it’s four.  Not four thirty.  Pool closes at four thirty.”

“Yeah, sorry, but we are closing at four today for swim team practice.”

“But the…it’s…um.”

“Sorry.”

“K.”

Back to the locker room.  And according to the looks on the faces of the three cold wet kids, G.I. Joe was a Communist spy, Iron Man was really made of tin foil, and sure enough, Hello Kitty really did just die.

Wow.  ”Sorry kids.  We came to the Y,

just

to

get

wet

in the shower.”

Dressed.  Back to the car.  Stop by the desk.

“Hi.  Will the pool be closing regularly at four from now on because of the swim team?”

“Yeah, uh, we put signs all over and it’s on the new schedule that we are closing the pool at 4 today.”

“Yep.  Not interested in all the ways I missed the news before.  I’m asking you about the future.  Will the pool be closing at four for a while now?”

“Yeah, we put signs up all over to let you know about today.  And it was on the new schedule. There are signs all over.”

“K.  I am asking if that’s going to be the norm for a few weeks.”

“Oh, it’s not on the new schedule.  I don’t know why that is.  But we put signs up about it.”

“Once again, I don’t care about being reminded of the damn signs that are actually not anywhere on the walls or windows and that it was or wasn’t on the new schedule.  WILL.  THE.  POOL.  BE CLOSING.  AT FOUR.  FROM NOW ON?”

“Yeah.  It should be on the new schedule.”

“THANKS.”

So we’ll try next week.  Before four.

Why?

Exactly.

Come and drink

How much of what we want is really what we want?

How much of what we fear is really the thing itself we are afraid of?

I have spent some time recently in the Valley of the Shadow.  It is a terrifying place. But praise be to God for leading me there.  For all my failures, my shortcomings and my sins, the Light of the World keeps leading me to the Rock that is higher than I. And when I find Him in the darkest places, He reminds me that He has remembered my sins no more. This is the work of the Lord. To lead me to those things of which I am most afraid. To take me to the places where I am most ashamed.  Not to comdemn me.  That is the work of the enemy.  The purpose of He who is greater is to lead me to them that I may confront them, realizing that there is no fear.  Then, realizing that once there is no fear, there is no power there, for in the Light of the shadow cast by the cross there are chains that have been broken.  There sin is remembered no more.  There all that was as scarlet shall be as white as snow.  I understand this when I paint.  I add white to my images to bring highlights, to change a tone or an appearance, and if there is any color that is difficult to eliminate all traces of, it is scarlet.  The brightest red in my palate. To turn any of it, no matter how small, into the whitest white, is impossible.  I find that I must start over.   Fear is the only weapon the enemy has against me.  And as I have been afraid for most of my life, I have come to learn, through experience, and by right of necessity, that any time I am afraid it is because the enemy is speaking to me.  I know, then, that all that he tells me is a lie, even as he speaks things to me that are true.
He tells me that I am a failure.

He tells me that I am a fraud.

He reminds me of all my sin.  Like a rolodex spinning in my head, bringing me to places in my youth when I disobeyed, when I was dishonest, when I treated a friend poorly for my own gain, when I lusted, when I focused solely on my own interests.  And on.  And on.  And on.

I have built a lifetime of wasting a lifetime.

This is what my enemy says.

And he’s right.

But he’s lying.

He’s lying because of what the One who made me says about me.

Because of the cross.  And the One who bled there.

All debts have been paid.  All chains are gone.  All sins, though they have been like scarlet, they are as white as snow.

Isaiah heard what the One who made me says.

But now, in spite of past judgments for Israel’s sins, thus says the Lord, He Who created you, O Jacob, He Who formed you, O Israel: Fear not, for I have redeemed you, ransomed you by paying a price instead of leaving you captives, I have called you by name; you are Mine.

And by leading me to these fears that have so bitterly held me in place, He not only shows me that the fear is all that there is, there is no substance to it, He shows me that He is the One Who made me.  He is the One who called me to Himself, and He is the One Who did not leave me captive.  He ransomed me.  The Greek word for deliverance used often in the New Testament means to draw unto.  He did not merely pull me out of the pit.  He drew me unto Himself.  This shifts the imagery of deliverance from a Hand of Providence that plucks me out of trouble and sets me on my way, to a powerful and swift image of One flying to the rescue to remove me from the peril and to hold me close to Himself from that point on.  And the thing that amazes and humbles and breaks me the most is that He does this again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

It did not end at the cross.

That was only the beginning of Him drawing me unto Himself.

Paul says that this is the same One who puts me in danger, so that He can save the day.  And deliver me.  Draw me unto Himself.

This is the God who wastes nothing.  So the enemy has me gripped in fear.  Does the enemy have you gripped in fear?

Good.

Because the battle is then won.  Fear is a lie.  So if it is a lie, then the thing of which you are most afraid is  The. One. Thing. That. Will. Never. Happen.

So now your fear is a gift.  It is a weapon to use against the enemy.  Because then, in the fear, you now know that He is the One drawing you unto Himself.  He tells us not to fear. Not as a command that we must obey.  But because He made us, and He called us by Name, and because He draws us to Himself, and often He will allow the enemy to bombard us with fear so that we may cry out to Him.  And then, He can save the day. And when He does, He reminds us that we are His.  That He paid a price not to leave us as captives, but to ransom us, to call us by name, and to declare that we belong to Him. Then He reminds us that all of our sins have been wiped away, as far as the east is from the west, a distance without end.  North eventually becomes south.  Travel as far north as you can, and you will eventually reach the furthest point and then begin to head south.  But go east or west, and you will never meet the other.  The line is endless. The distance is greatest.

But there is even more to the fear.  This I have learned in the Valley of the Shadow.  It is a lesson that has become a precious jewell to me.  It was hard won, and I do not share it lightly.

So can I tell you a secret?

Can I tell you my greatest fear?

I am afraid

of being misunderstood.

Of being false.  Or falsely interpreted.  That anything I say would be used against me in a way I never intended.  That I would be misinterpreted in my compassion.  In my love for others.  In my passions.
That someone would use that which is closest to me, my words, my stories, and my desire to be a safe place for the least of these, and use them as weapons against me.

This is my greatest fear.  I am trembling even as I type the words.  My heart races to think of it.
And yet I know that there is no substance in the fear.  But it remains a difficult thing to be so vulnerable.

So when the Lord, the One Who made me, the One Who told me I am His, decided to lead me to the very darkest place I could go, I realized that I would not survive without surrendering to Him.

When I was younger, I followed the story of Abraham.  He was given a promise, and the promise was fulfilled after decades of longing.  A dream was realized after all hope had been lost.  Then the Lord, the One Who made Abraham, the One Who told Abraham he was His, told Abraham to take the promise and climb a mountain.  There he was to bind up the promise and lay it on an altar, slit it’s throat and kill it there on the mountain. To offer it up as a sacrifice.  The promise.  That he had been waiting for.  That he had longed for in his heart.  The promise that was his name, his identity.  Abraham.  Father of many.  Take the only son you have, and kill him.  Offer him up to me.

What a God.

I followed this story through all the fears and dreams and passions of my youth.

To play a game all my life.  I had to give that one up for something greater.  It still hurt. I spent my money on things for that game.  I gave up time with friends.  I slept with my bat.  I practiced everyday.
But I climbed the mountain, and laid it on the altar.  And he gave it back better.  It was the thing he gave me to lead me where He needed to get me alone, to tell me my true purpose and my true calling.  And now, I teach that game to others, to watch them succeed.  And I teach it to my sons, and I watch the joy on their faces as they learn the game their dad loves so much.  And it’s so much better than I ever imagined.

To love another with all my heart.  To journey with her to a place that only we could go together.  I thought I had it once.  And she broke my heart.  So I took a walk.  And I found myself in a place where I had prayed for her so many times before.  I stood on the edge of the hill and I heard a voice tell me to climb a mountain again.  So I did.  And I bound up my dream to be a husband, to love from my heart the way I was made, and I placed it on the altar.  And I left it there, knowing that I didn’t have many chances left.  But He gave it back.  And when I met her this time, I knew.  I didn’t have to try.  I told her who I was, and where I was going, and I told her that if she would like to tell the story with me then we could go together.  She said yes.  And I have  never been so loved.  Now we have five more reasons to keep telling our story.

I knew He called me to be a story teller in a classroom.  So I went to the places where He led me to make that happen.  And I followed Him there, too.  Then I was there when people I trusted to love telling stories as much as I did betrayed that trust.  I was afraid. Was this all a misunderstanding?  If so, will I be misunderstood as well?  What will happen to this place? To my dream of telling stories to kids who need hope?  I had to climb the mountain again.  I bound up my dream once again.  I placed it on the altar, and I left it there.  I walked back down the mountain this time.  If this is what it looks like to follow you through my fears, I thought, then I want no part of this one.  You gave me what I desired most before.  This time, all you left me with was betrayal.  I obeyed. I stayed in line. I didn’t rock the boat. And this is what it looks like. So I left the mountain.
But He brought me back.  And He reminded me that the dreams He has for me are not contingent on the behaviors of others.  He did things to get me back to the mountain that only He can do.  Miracles, I’m telling you.  And when all hope was lost, and the knife was raised, and I had nothing left after all that He had done, he provided the ram, and gave it back to me once again.  He led me to the greatest mountains, to a place where Hope is needed so desperately.  And He gave me the freedom to tell the stories once again.

Then, He set to work on the hardest dream.  The one that keeps me up at night, staring at the ceiling when I feel like I should be working on the dream.  The one that haunts me in the moments of my failures.  I have feared being misunderstood, and He made me a writer.  Dramatic Irony.  It’ll get you every time.   He led me to the Valley on this one. There was no promise of giving it back this time.  I cried out to Him even as I was being misunderstood on many different fronts, in ways that terrified me.  It was painful.  It was dark.  I cried out for a chance to vindicate myself.  He answered only that He would do the vindicating.  He reminded me that He Himself remained silent.  Think He doesn’t know what it’s like to be misunderstood?  He IS Truth.  And people called Him a liar.  He IS the Word.  And people called Him a blasphemer.  He IS life.  And people say death comes in His Name more than any other.  Through all of this, He did not want me to press through the fear.  He did not want me to confront it.  He did not want me to battle it.

He wanted me to surrender it.

I didn’t hear that it would be given back.  I feared that if I gave it up, then the floodgates would open, and I would learn the meaning of being misunderstood.  I feared that I was going to pay for my fear in order to get over it.  So I held on.

I remember a portion of the Narnia books, when a girl named Jill is brought to Narnia. She is alone, and she journeys far.  The journey makes her thirsty to the point of delirium.   Finally, she comes to a river.  A drink.  Relief.  Life.  As she approaches, she sees a lion beside the water.  She is immediately struck still in fear.  Her fear of the lion is greater than her thirst.  But oh, she is thirsty.  She feels she will die without a drink. So she asks the lion, If I come near to drink, will you promise not to harm me?

The lion responds

I promise nothing.  If you are thirsty, come and drink.

She can’t decide what to do.  If she does not drink, she will die.  If she goes to drink, she may be harmed.

What a lion.

What a God.

This is the One Who has created me.  The One Who has called me by name.

Lord, I cried out to Him that day, when my fears were at their highest, I am thirsty.

If you are thirsty, come and drink, He said.

But Lord, if I come to drink, I will have to give you this fear that is between us.  And if I give it to you, will you promise not to let it overcome me?  Will you take it and remove it without it harming me?

I promise you nothing, son. If you are thirsty, come and drink.

So I surrendered it, because I was so tired and thirsty.  So tired of dealing with the fear. So thirsty from digging my own cisterns.  So if this was going to destroy me, then I would have a drink and die from my fear.  If this was the way it was to be, then it was to be.

And a strange thing happened next.  I heard a sound.  And this really happened.  I heard a sound like a metal cable snapping, a sharp and fierce ping, as if a metal cable that had been holding a great weight had finally snapped from the stress.  Then over the next few days I watched as the Lord did things to show me how the things I had been most afraid of were never going to happen.  As the enemy had led me through all my past failures, my God led me through all the realities behind my fears and showed me how absurd they had been all along.  But it was not in judgment that He showed me these things.  It was in joy.

And He went even further.

Your castles, He said, and your strongholds shall have bars of iron and bronze, and as your day, so shall your strength, your rest and security be.

I am good, He said, to those who wait hopefully and expectantly for Me, to those who seek Me, inquire of and for Me by right of necessity and on the authority of My Word.  It is good that one should hope in and wait quietly for the salvation, the safety and ease of the Lord.

As you stand by the river today, realize that He will promise nothing as you come and drink.  But He invites you, in that moment, to surrender to Him what it is you are most afraid of, angry about, unsure of, hurt by.  That He promises nothing is not a test.  He is not toying with you.  He is telling you that He is Love, and that Love is nothing without a choice.  So He is telling you that you have the choice.  He will do all He can to lead you to the river.  But you have to decide to come and drink.  He will allow you to choose, and He will wait until you do.

If you are thirsty, come and drink.

If you are thirsty, come and drink.

If you are thirsy,

come and drink.

Speaking Engagement

Wrestling today.  Should have won a state title by now.  Not sure what weight class.  Thinking heavyweight, but then again, are existential problems and identity issues really that important?

Conversations aplenty.

Encouraged someone to be more positive today.  Got chewed out and called a liar.  Then got sarcastically called Superman with no solutions.
‘Sokay.  I like Batman anyway.

Some of the conversations were one sided.

Here’s how they went.

THINGS MY ADVERSARY TOLD ME:
You are such a failure.

Don’t even try to speak up.

See what happens when you try?

This heaviness you are feeling?  Should have been over it a loooooong time ago.  Man up.

No one respects you.

Maybe you really are a liar.

All those things you’re afraid of?  Just keep being afraid.  Or don’t.  Either way the more you think about them, the more time you are wasting being somebody.

You can’t even put two coherent thoughts together, can you?

You’ll never write like her.

Don’t ask for prayer.  Only makes you look like a fool.

 

THINGS I TOLD MYSELF TODAY:
Breathe, man.  There is nothing to fear.

On second thought….

Why can’t I get this right?

Where did all the things I used to believe in go?

I didn’t guard my heart.

I didn’t guard my heart.

Why didn’t anyone ever tell me to guard my heart?

 

THINGS THE MAN FROM GALILEE TOLD ME:
Son.

I am still with you, even as I always was.

Don’t be afraid.

But if you are, it’s still okay.

Don’t feel as if you have to get it right, right now, or ever.

And don’t worry about worrying about whether or not you should worry about getting it right.

Waters.  There are rushing waters deep inside you.  Listen for them.

Remember you are not battling the people you are battling.  There is much at work that you do not see, and you may not know the baggage they are carrying that is speaking for them.

Grace.

It’s enough.

Guard your heart.

And all the times you haven’t?

I will go back to each of those places and I will restore.  Rebuild.  And guard once again.

Do you know just how far is the east from the west?

 

 

So.
I am trying to listen to the Man who keeps breaking my heart.

For all the good.

He keeps breaking my heart.

It’s a beautiful thing.

How do I get it back?

Questions are running through my mind today.  Not many.  Just a few, and the same ones over and over again.  I have been talking with a friend today, wandering through muddled memories and finding things that were once familiar but that have become something that I wish I had not sold in some garage sale of moving on through time.  I remember when we realized that we were moving out West.  We packed all that we could take with us.  So much was sold off in order to get us here.  I sold some things that were valuable from a practical standpoint, and made enough money to get us here from there.  Other things were left behind.  Our dining room chairs laid out on the lawn.   Toys that we couldn’t afford to move.  The piano that had been given to me by a friend, and had awakened so many creative ideas and rekindled an old love for playing music that had eluded me some time before.  These things we left behind because we knew that more was out there.  Better opportunities.  Greater adventures.  More learning and doing along the lines of our design.  So it was worth it to us to leave them behind.
In the almost two years it has been we have gotten settled, and we have replaced some things that were lost or left.  More toys than we know what to do with have been given to us by generous friends and family.  We’ve found furniture and other things to place in our home.  A new dining room table found its way to us the other day.  Even had six matching chairs.

But there are things that I can’t help but feel lost over having lost them myself.  When we move on, we take stock of what needs to come along with us, and what needs to stay behind.  Today I am wondering what happens when we lose.  What happens when things are taken from us, and we need to find a way to move on without them when they are things that we have attachment to, or things that have helped so much in the past?  Or if they are things that we loved so dearly and rightfully so?  I realize today that I am still mourning.  If you’ve read my musings before, you’ve read about loss that we have been given.  Strange to think of a loss as something that has been given, but I see all things from His hands as gifts, no matter how painful they are, no matter how little I understand of them.  I am not comfortable with admitting that.  There is so much in my heart that wants to cry out, and to fight back.  But the first words that come to mind are that loss is a gift, even as much as having gained something is a gift.  I don’t know yet what this loss will bring in terms of things for which I will rejoice, but if I have learned one thing about the Giver, it is that this much is true.

I find myself today holding the Giver at arms length.  He is not far away from me.  Yet He is not near enough for me to feel good about it either.  The strange thing to me is that there He waits.  Waiting for me.  Waiting for an invitation.  For a breaking point.  For something in me to give.  I do not know.  I thought I knew His ways with me, but all of this is different. When I left behind all that I left behind I fear that I did not take with me things that I had always known to be true.  There is a lingering thought in my head that I left some things by the side of the road that were meant to travel with me.  And now this loss, this thing that I thought I was over, has brought back to me a feeling of being without a road map that I had relied on so much in the past.  I don’t feel as if I am making sense.

Grief is a strange thing.  There is no way to prepare for it.  No way to subscribe to it without losing even more.  There is no prescription for grief.  How long will it take to subside?  How long until we make peace with ourselves over it?  If we were to hold on to it and make it the forefront of our being, then those around us would become weary with our tears.  When we deny it, it finds us until we acknowledge its presence.  Then, upon acknowledging it, we find sympathy from others.  ”Of course it’s okay” they tell us.  ”You are still grieving.”  Strange how that works.  An awkward arrangement we have made with our pain.

I do not like this place.  It is a surreal landscape that I cannot pin down.  None of the trees are familiar to me.  The roads are not clearly marked.  I have lost my way again it seems.  I miss someone I have not met.  And I miss so much of the parts of myself I used to avoid.  This is all very strange to me.  Good?  It will be.  But I can’t say just yet.  Rejoicing?  James can keep that to himself for now.  Pity?  Why.  Perhaps honesty is the place where I am trying to arrive.  Honesty with myself that I still hurt for this one that I have lost.  That I still grieve in moments when I cannot understand why.  It makes sense when I spell it out:  If I am to be one who feels his way through life, knowing and touching and welcoming the heart of God and the heart of others, then it makes most perfect sense why I feel so much about this.  But if I am being honest, then it is far removed from me that I am allowing myself to be there, to do that, to rest there.  I have spent three years intentionally pursuing things that have scared me.  I have tracked down and wrestled with the angels who have presided over the borders of the lands where I have feared the most.  I have defeated them, and wrestled till dawn with them.  My hips have been broken enough to make me crippled.  But instead I stand.  I do not run into the promised land, for in place of  the fear that once held me down, is now a fear that I will lose so much more if I move forward.  You may tell me it is not a rational fear.  You may tell me there is no reality in fear.  But in this land where I am now, I cannot hear you.
For whatever reason, I cannot hear you.

I look behind me and see giants slain.  I see walls destroyed so that not one stone lays on top of another.  I see angels and demons wounded and fallen.  I see thorns that have been ripped from the roots, and chains that have been broken.  I have overcome so much.  If I were to tell it all it would fill a book.  But when I look in front of me at this point, when I have lost…
I look in front of me at what lies ahead, and I cannot see past my grief.  How long, oh Lord.

Is it worth getting any of it back?  Or am I forced to wait here, or to move ahead with nothing but what I can see one step at a time?

My grief tells a story.  But right now I cannot hear what it is trying to say.

As it is written on my heart

I was recently given an opportunity to think of a question that I would ask my hero, if given the chance.  My mind immediately went to one person.  There are people whom I greatly admire.  There are people who I would like to claim are my hero, perhaps out of a desire to place importance and honor where it belongs, even if a particular person may not be my hero.  I think of my parents.  There is much to admire and honor about them.  I think of my brother and my sisters.  There is much that they have done for me out of love.  It is a love that I cherish and adore between us.  So much of their encouragement and help to me has been selfless, effortless, and without a moment’s hesitation.  As the youngest it is difficult to know just how to love them in the same ways.  I am not sure at times that there is something I have to offer them.  But if I did, I would give it.  Come to think of it, none of them have ever asked much of me.  Why is that, I wonder?  My mind wanders to the possibilities, not the least of which is the question of whether or not they think me capable.

I think of my wife, who has saved my life on numerous occasions.  If the definition of a hero is one who gives their life for another, then my wife is a hero.  My hero.
But she is not the one my mind went to immediately.

I have discovered recently that part of knowing myself is found in knowing the places I have been, and the people from whom I have come.  I look at my design as being made of my heritage.  There is a distortion in claiming that my heritage is all of me.  There is also a distortion in ignoring it altogether.  But there is a reality in the fact that I am who I am in part because there is Irish blood, and German blood flowing through my veins, with a little bit of Scotch thrown in for good measure.  To me that speaks of passion, and ingenuity, and determination, and a willingness to accept the option to fight before considering flight.  It tells me that I see the world through a bent sense of humor, one that I hide more than I reveal, for the Irish in me is crude and fowl at times, and the German has a sense of superiority.  It tells me that there is oppression received, and oppression enforced.  It tells me that you cannot tell me who I am for anything, and that there is nothing you could say against one who bears my name without dealing with the consequences.  It also tells me that there is a whole lot of drinking that I have yet to do.

I have recently discovered more of the German in me.  Old letters, old mysteries, secrets long kept, and discoveries I have made on my own have led me to some incredible conclusions that have filled in some of the empty frames that I had on the shelves of my heart.
This has completed more of the understanding of myself for which I have longed for.  It has relieved some burdens that I carried, and given me others to pick up for a time.  There is more here to be discovered, to be sure.

The Irish part of me I have always held to.  It was always celebrated in good humor.  There was laughter and mirth associated with the Irish blood, and the name that I bear.  I was always closer to the Irish family.  And this is where my attention was focused when asked about my hero, and what I would ask them if I had the chance.

My grandfather is a man whom I have always known, but there were not many words shared between us.  There is so much about his spirit that I know I carry within me.  It is strange how we know things without knowing how.  Many of my most cherished memories involve him in some capacity.  One thing I cherished most was that we didn’t need to speak.  He made a point to spend the day with me when grandparents were invited to school.  He made sure I ate my sandwich during lunch.  We shared walks, tv, time around his table eating cereal late at night.  Not many words were exchanged.  But there was a spirit of rest that surrounded me when I was with him.  I know that there is much that we shared.  Most of those are for revealing at another time.  One thing that I have found recently that I share with him is a spirit of fear.  There is a principal at work in the world that reveals itself as generational sin, a curse that lasts from one generation to the next depending on the level of severity within an initial iniquity.  There is nothing to blame within it. There is only redemption to be found, as in all things.  There is value in identifying as much as one can in order to bring it to bear beneath the cross, and the Blood that flowed to cover all things.  Strange as it may sound, I know about myself that I have been called to bring things under His dominion, to wrest them from the hands of the one who twists them against their design.  I know that it is my place within the family to redeem much that was once lost.  And this, for me, is where so much of my fear lies.  There is another aspect to being the youngest that brings a great deal of anxiety and frustration.  So often the voice of the youngest is not heard.  So often their voice is not considered.  So often they are overlooked, and sometimes this is simply because as we grow we move forward in our own lives, while holding certain places and people in the grips of the past of our memories.  Life moves on.  We become immersed in our own paths.  It happens this way.  When we live in the ways of others who have gone before us, we often look to them for affirmation and at times for permission, all the while not learning to stand on our own.  I know that part of my path has taken this turn.  Once again, there is no one to blame.  As the saying goes, it is what it is.  But I know that I carry so much of that with me, even as I try to discover and uncover what my place truly is.  My grandfather was a large man, with a larger spirit, and a greater purpose than he was ever free to acknowledge.  I carry the fear that I may not realize those things that he never realized about himself.  Three things I know that he loved with all that was within him.  His sweetheart.  His children.  And his God.  He lived his life in devotion to all three.  This I know because I saw it.  I saw him love his sweetheart in the way that he grieved after her passing. I never knew her.  The only memory I have is of her lying in a hospital bed, with a strange light glowing behind her, and I was there to tell her goodbye when I felt as if I had never really said hello.  I remember his grief.  It was heavy, unspoken, and real.  I know the love he had in his heart for the rest of his life, for he never found another.  His prayers for her were constant.  I think often of the sight he beheld when the life left his lungs on this earth, and he breathed the air of Heaven where she was waiting for him.  What a reunion.
I saw him love his kids in the ways that he was involved with their lives as adults.  The gatherings and the phone calls, always to know how each of them were, and each of their own kids in turn.  He restructured his life to make room for us all, and there was never a greater joy than when he was with all of us.  I’ll never forget one of the greatest affirmations I ever received.  It came from him, when he visited me one day at school.  I was in art class preparing for an annual student exhibition.  I had my work laid out, deciding what to display.  He came in and looked over all of it.  The smile on his face, and the joy his spirit emitted at the sight of my work was a gift of immeasurable worth.  He told me his brother was artistic, one of my father’s uncles whom I had never known, but who was greatly admired and deeply loved.   I had the same gift as one of my grandfather’s and my father’s favorite people.
And I saw him love his God with an intimacy that was beautiful and mysterious to me.  We walked to church together.  I loved his suits, and his overcoat, and his big brown shoes.  He lit candles.  He prayed before meals, the same prayer each time even though we prayed a different prayer.  A bite would not touch His lips without the familiar and rhythmic words every time.  ”Bless us, oh Lord, for these Thy gifts…”  I delighted in hearing it each time.  I remember something I saw him do which is perhaps my favorite image of him.  I walked past his room one night on my way to bed.  His door was cracked, and I could see him kneeling by his bedside, wearing a spot into the floor.  I wondered at how many times he had done that before.  How often, how faithfully he was there each night, giving thanks, praying for friends, blessing the saints, and meeting his God there on the hardwood floor by his bed.  I heard his voice, quiet this time, whispering mysteries to the ears of Heaven.  It is an image that has changed me.

My hero was a man of passion, and a man of purpose.  I wonder, as he lived his life, what purposes he left behind for something that needed to be done.  I know of him that he was full of life, so much so that many others longed to be near him.  He spent his life working hard, selling cars.  But I know that most people bought a part of him more than they bought a means of transportation.  He was successful because he was all of those things that I knew him to be.  Passionate.  Honest.  True.  Full of Life.  These are the things I hope to be.
I know also that there were fears that gripped his heart.  And I have to wonder if some of these same fears I carry now with me.  One of the things I fear the most is that I will not be heard, and that I will not have the courage to speak when the time comes for me to tell the stories that I am meant to tell.  I have dreams in which I am confronted by doubt and fear, and I can only open my mouth and whimper a hoarse cry that goes unheard.  I drown in futility and wastefulness then.  And I wake up with anger and a choking fear that twists its way inside and up out of me.  It is like a tree that has its roots deep beneath me, a tree that grows up through the core of me and dies even as it grows and twists upon itself, black and full of hell.

I fear the most that I will let fear dictate which of my dreams die, and in what order.  Langston Hughes wrote of dreams, and placed such importance on them to say that when we let our dreams die our life becomes a broken winged bird no longer capable of flight.  It is a metaphor that strikes to the core of design and purpose.   A bird was created to fly.  When wings are broken it can no longer fulfill its purpose.  A bird with broken wings dies.  Life without purpose is a life of death.  There is nothing for it.  Dreams are not these things to which we aspire in order to move forward.  They are not trivial things that we have in our youth only to see them framed in practicality as we grow.  They are from the very core of us, the very heart of us, the very part of us that bears the Image of the One who made us.  When we deny dreams, we deny our purpose, our design, our Creator.
I know that there was nothing wasted in the life of my grandfather.  He was full of life and passion to the very end.  To say any other would be to dishonor him and to claim something false.  I do wonder, in light of all of this, what dreams he had that went unfulfilled because of fear.  We all have them.  These things that make us question who we are, what we are doing with our lives, and whether or not there is more.  So I know I would ask him, if given the chance now, what dreams did he let die because he was afraid.

I would hope that when I come to that place where I last saw him, where he was ready to give up his spirit and meet his God face to face, that I would answer that I merged my spirit with the Spirit of the Living God, and allowed His life to move through me so as to put to rest all my fears, and pursue with great faith the Kingdom as it is written on my heart.
That is for another time.
For now, I must begin to answer that question for today.  I will know the answer as I move forward one step, one breath, one moment.  The Kingdom was alive in my hero.  He is realizing it even now.  I hope to carry so much more of him in those things than of anything else, and to put to rest the fears that he carried with him.
I know that I have a voice, and that part of putting those things to rest means finding it, and cultivating it, and speaking boldly from that voice those things that are on my heart.

Fear is a powerful thing.

A heart full of passion is so much more so.