in loving memoriam.

“...Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

In the backing away from her as she drew her last few breaths there on the hospital bed and in the whispering of those words, her favorite Psalm, in her ear, I realized just how formative she’d been in my life all these years.  Roots tended to.

Those words, surely, a memoriam of her life lived well; a nurtured hope alive and well in my days stretching on.  Forever echoing back to me.  A path walked well laid as a map, a reference to end. My grandmother affectionately always known as, Maw Maw Lucy, lived the 92 years given to her, the good with the bad, the forsaken and hoped to be forgotten days as holy in her simple continuance, her steady countenance, rooted in a faith disciplined in prayers and humble trust.  She just took the darker and the damned with a such a delicate movement in a heavenly sentiment.

“We can always pray and ask God for help,” I’d hear her say easily.

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Just yesterday, I was asked to give her eulogy.  In searching through thoughts, I looked back over years and saw the most beautiful landscape diligently cared for, a steady attended to life.

Her words and sayings echoed.  Her actions revisited me.

Simple.  Echoing behind and ahead.

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Here’s some of what I shared.

If you sat for any length of time with Maw Maw Lucy, you’d know her fully well.  You’d notice her to be a lady of manners, faith, conversation and family.  Even my friends she’d only met once, maybe twice, would affectionately call her, Maw Maw Lucy.  She had a charming unassuming way about her that would comfortably draw you in and make you feel at home no matter the circumstance of life.

She shared secrets and kept secrets with her grandchildren, told those secrets and stories to her great grandchildren, knew her neighbors better than some know their own family, loved her children deeply and immovably and held tightly to a simple strong faith where in the end everything would work out just as it should.

I remember two distinct moments of Maw Maw Lucy that I’d like to share.

When I was young boy, my grandparents owned an Oldsmobile.  My Paw Paw drove careful and slow, mostly too slow for me and my sister’s liking.  We’d beg him to drive faster but he always stayed serious and steady at the wheel.  I remember one time in particular, Maw Maw Lucy was driving the Oldsmobile with just me and my sister in the car.  Of course, we both begged her to drive faster.  My sister implored her, “Maw Maw, drive fast like Daisy Duke on the Dukes of Hazard!!”  And to our amazement, she did. With a playful but fully serious tone she glanced back and told us, "hold on".  For the first time we felt that Oldsmobile speed faster than normal as we approached railroad tracks.

Remember how long cars were in those days...?  It felt liked we floated for miles.

She always took careful attention to involve herself into our context, to find way into our hearts.  Tending roots.

Another lasting moment is right after a particularly difficult time in my own little daughters’ lives.  They were devastated when my wife died.  Just right here in this same funeral home room, Maw Maw Lucy quietly sat with them as they leaned into her.  They cried, and I remember hearing her whisper to them that everything would be okay.  And they believed her.  Surely.  Forever.

She had a way of inspiring you to believe simply for good things in life no matter how difficult life sometimes seemed.

The goodness of life now and the hope of All ahead of us.  She believed in God, Jesus and Heaven, and trusted that in the end He was enough.

How do you measure 92 years in just a few minutes? Look around this room at my wonderful family and all of you she lovingly called friends.  There are hints of Maw Maw Lucy in each of our eyes.  Stories of her in our lives remain in each of our hearts.

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What my grandmother left behind is a legacy that leads me still in her absence.  An easy trust continuing even in trembling times.

How grateful I am for my daughters to have really known her firsthand, their great grandmother!

Her life, legacy and passing sharpen my focus for family even more.  I can only hope now to leave something similar behind in my going.

{in memoriam // 07.06.20 - 10.28.12}

little formative things.

“Emily, go put away the clothes in your room.” And with a newfound tonal resonance in my words and voice, she simply went.  No protest.  All activity was paused and with the obedience of a disciplined monk child she followed my instruction and literally put away the clothes lying all over her bedroom floor.

I must admit, I sat on the couch baffled and a little set back.  Once back downstairs, she announced confidently and rather matter-of-factly that all was tidy and her room had been cleaned ...just as I told her to.  Usually she protests or tells me that all is picked up and cleaned in her room when I ask.  This time was different.  I didn’t ask if her room was clean.  I just gave instruction and she did.

Wow ...in a way that effort eclipses expectation.  I breathed in deeply the air of success and accomplishment and sank warmly into thoughts of the amazing young woman she would become and the considered triumphant parent I would be.

Then I was yanked back to now and normal as she got into a fight with her younger sister, said several jabbing things to her and simply walked away leaving her little sister in tears.

Another wow.  This time expectation crushed effort and I was again the hobbling parent reaching blindly into the dark hoping to find the right way.

It spins me dizzy how fast the tempo and pace can change under our roof and within our hearts.

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If I had to bet a million dollars that you and I were the same parents, similar in struggles,  I’d bet confidently.  We all face disciplinary struggles with our kids and deal with insecurity in parenting at least in thinner times when what we say and what they do race away from each other.

My kids are good kids, but it’s constant work, reshaping, repositioning, picking up falling pieces and reinforcing over and over again.  A parent’s work is never quite done.

How the work is done matters exponentially.

I have a tendency to swing for the fences, to be the best parent in the best times and run the bases in victory.  I want to be the best parent to my girls and sometimes my desire to be the best parent gets in the way of being an effective parent.

A parent aiming for best aims at response as validation.  If the kid listens well, the parent succeeds, their ability winning the kid and showing the way. A parent aiming for effective aims at learning as validation.  If the kid learns well, the parent is effectively teaching the kid to learn and think, guiding maturation.

Obviously, there’s room for semantic confusion and muddying of the waters, but for me, being the best parent is a misdirected aim focused on my kids’ behavior and response versus what they are actually learning.  The why of things and how they respond to life situations is of greater importance both now and into their future.  When they’re older facing decisions needed to be made, they’re ability to base off of what they’ve learned will support them much better than merely following instruction.

I learned this lesson bewildered by Emily’s quick response to my instruction.

Each time I told her what to do, she did it.  She could follow my instruction, no problem.  But if I asked her if her room was clean and to clean it if it needed to be, her room would be a mess and remain a mess until I told her to clean it.

And so we talked about what a lie was and that by giving me idea that her room was clean when it wasn’t, she was then lying to me.  That broke her little heart, but in a great way.  The effectiveness of parenting in this situation was that Emily learned how to not only respond, but to think critically and be more honest.

It is the little formative things in parenting that transcends best and helps us to be lastingly effective.  And those little formative things must be done over and over again.

A parent’s work is never done. "Direct your children onto the right path, and when they are older, they will not leave it." (Prov 22:6)

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A Deeper Family :: tipping the scale.

The day never holds enough minutes and moments. It never seems enough; the effort given, the time split, the little sacrifices made here and there, the want for more quality time, all feel like sand slipping through fingers.

Life.

It always moves faster than we think in the moment.  One day we are holding a tiny newborn nearly too nervous to even move with them in arm.  The next we find ourselves chasing them as they pedal their bike down the sidewalk and reviewing rules when readying them for sleepovers at friends’ houses.  And before we have time to be fully ready, they will be driving themselves around, shaving their faces or their legs, or both and be talking of college, career, dreams or even marriage.

Time doesn’t wait, not for you to learn how to get parenting and family right nor for you to grow unselfish enough to see or catch up to opportunities fleeting.  Like sand sliding through the skinny of an hour glass, time is constantly going.  And so are the days with it.

I had this terrible thought recently.  I only have about 8 years until my oldest daughter moves into the world off to college or work, chasing dreams and meeting love.

Continue reading my new post at A Deeper Family...

unicorn hopes and an always better day.

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...and I hope that You help everyone in the world who needs you tonight ...and I hope that You help us sleep so good and have sweet dreams ...and I hope that we all have better days tomorrow ...and I hope that we have fun tomorrow ...and I hope that we have everything we need ...and I hope You make my friends play nice ...and I hope You give food to the people who don’t have food like we do ...and I hope that we have the funnest dreams tonight and that we’re not so tired for school ...and I hope...

Her little list continues to build for some time until I open my eyes and smile at her.  She smiles back, “Okay, Amen.”

Chloe’s five and far more secure in God and tomorrow than I seemingly am in my strongest hour.

I doubt. She dreams. Her little mind still floats in fairy tales and forevermore where unicorns exist somewhere and so do dragons and elves and her mommy with God.  The world that Chloe knows exists in parallel but very differently from mine.  We wake up around the same time each morning.  I read quietly about parenting or theology or creativity in order to understand more.  She daydreams fuzzy eyed in twilight still moving from dream to day about good overcoming bad in some way.

Our expectations for the day are just as different, too.  Mine, to just make it to the end and bring home all that I can as provider.  Hers, to have fun and squeeze every second from another day given her.  She trusts in goodness.  Questions and conversation readily pour out of her as she lays her head down and resume the moment of her rising again.

For all she knows, she is limitless.

Some days I’m convinced that I learn much more from my young daughters than they do from me.  I use words shaped in intellect, reason and experience, in an attempt to model how and who and what they should be while their language bends holy and hopeful, always.  They don’t search for answers and solutions.  Hope resolves all in their lives.

Even at the darkest, they were the first to speak of how our lives would be good again.

They get something that I’ve forgotten. Soon they will forget, too.

We loose childlike wonder and learn to sit up straight, intellectualize our questions and bow to time demanding more and less.  Something sacred happens, or is lost, or maybe even stolen.  We land, closer to the ground, feet planted in the dirt of earth and reason and forget how it feels to fly, our wings clipped by the thought that people don’t fly.  We grow up and childlike faith is stolen by explanations and the independence of making our way in the world.

What I’m simply learning, yet steadily confounding me still, is that my children exist closer to God than I do.  But I can explain Him better.

As far as Chloe’s concerned, God feeds the unicorns just as He gives us better days.  One day, she will know that the world operates despite the absence of unicorns and that fairy tales are stories.

But what she must know and not lose is wonder.

I think a chief goal in parenting is preserving wonder, for it is the seedbed of hope, faith and trust persevering in a world standing apart defined by boundaries and limits.  Our effort should be given less in drawing lines, boundaries not to be crossed, and more in drawing expansive circles for them to grow in.  This is not to suggest that we blurry truth to an ambiguous something, but rather, expand and preserve wonder through their maturation.

My girls present some of the grandest, unfettered prayers I've ever heard.  In simplicity, they live though each new day pushes harder against them.  Explanations will be accepted.

Wonder can always be preserved though as I invite them to explore God and realize that life in each day is always a beginning, never an ending.  There’s no need for me to rush them along into greater understanding.

For now, the unicorns still fly in Chloe’s world.  And I love that they do.

a life bigger than little.

Dying in waves all feathers and wax floating apart, the sun always greater than the miracle of flying itself.   Is it not enough just to fly?

There is no way of living life other than here, now and present.  All else is dreaming of was and will be.

Tomorrow dangling like a carrot, promising better.  Effort shimmering on brow, an ache in your knees and burn in your belly.  Success donned by those not waiting to want but chasing life bigger than little for the applause of the faceless watchers whispering hushed fancies, impressed by all that you could become.  Like a lover carried on a symphony, tangled in dreams and desire, tomorrow speaks a language so much more alluring than today buried in its mundane repetition and drudgery.

“For another day, I’d give anything.” I hear those words amidst the dying often cutting through regret and the reversal of the worth of a day piled into years.    But not all long in regret.  Some just want another day lived like the other days behind lived so well.  Just one more.  Working for a hospice, I observe death with certain regularity.  Almost every time I sit with a patient coming closer to the realization of death nearer, I hear those words wishing for more time, another trip, evening shared on the porch or experience together.  In two years, I’ve never listened to someone offer a trade for more money, promotion, accomplishment or accolades.  Always another day lost in simplicity, in life little.

From there, in the hearing of their wanting words, clarity finds me.

There is a lust in my heart for tomorrow, a day warm and comfortable, when my name soars above the story and out of the chaos hovering in the day now.  And in that lust, life grows much bigger than little.

“What if you never reach the lover, Tomorrow?”  I hear that echoing sentiment threading through my thoughts sewing worth into every stitch that pulls today and tomorrow closer.  Burden is what the lover becomes overshadowing now and blurring the lines of what matters in the minutes and hours lived in the only guaranteed time given, now.

Nothing exists outside of here except memories and want.  The screaming kids do.  So does the pile of laundry and the stories told and smiles stolen before bedtime.  The job and the desk that you set at, the neighbors who live at a waving, not handshaking distance do too, but I miss them often in the hustle of life bigger.

Life bigger than twenty four hours, always.  Ahead.  Behind.  Bigger.

What’s discovered in a gazed life bigger than little are problems standing impenetrable, bigger than life.  It’s a farsighted want rooted intrinsic in the construct of life always almost lived.  One more reach, another late meeting, another deadline honored holy above all else needing attention.  Life leans forward, unbalanced and shallow.

The soil erodes unattended when the little important things are neglected.  Tomorrow will come in all its glory and you will be there when you are faithful to the smallness of today, ready for all that tomorrow brings.

I want the bending fidelity of Job, the blemished honesty of David, the limp of Jacob to live deeply now in both the blessing and curse.  The lover, Tomorrow, will find me.  She was made for me as she was for them, too.

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So I’m telling myself a few things often to size and resize life littler.

NOT A HURRIED PACE but a being; embracing whatever comes with the day.  I’ve learned to pray one prayer in my waking, “Father, thank you for all this day holds.”

UNTIE THOSE THINGS UNIMPORTANT and learn value in what really is important and irreplaceable; writing assignments for projects and my book and blog posts have been delayed and at the mercy of family.  I’d burn every book someday written by me for another chance to watch my daughters smile honestly.

VALUE YOURSELF LESS IMPORTANT in your pursuit of the day; involve others in your life and dreams and pursuit; One of the greatest personal exercises on help and humility was a survey I recently sent out to a few of those who have been close to me asking them to comment on what they see my strengths, weaknesses, inadequacies and shortcomings to be.  The longing for tomorrow was crowding our togetherness today.

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What does life littler than big look like to you?   Gaze upon it and grab it.