The Allure of Happiness and the Absence of Time.

Two strains of wrong both with the appearance of pretty: one, happy and two, busy.  Both are drugs to appease something wrong deep within me – acceptance – speaking to the question that dull aches like a pain you learn to live with

 

Am I okay just the way I am?

 

:::::::

 

One day I will be happier.  We all will be.  In the meantime, I spend all I have to reach then, when skies promise stained blue and unthreatened smiles and my shallow heart quits wanting in the abundance of all that will be – when I’m a better man.  I long for him and wait to be him.  My time is spent working to be better, happier and more settled in who I am.

 

The idea that there will come a day when I will somehow be a better version of me who’s more successful, wealthier, more fit, more experienced and just overall happier is a diseased reach for something that simply doesn’t exist.  We tell ourselves that who we are is simply not enough now and that somewhere out there, one day we will be happier, leading our hearts to roam hungry and unhinged from both now and truth.  We miss the simple, yet grounding, reality of a sunrise now, a righted smile despite difficulty, the realization of good now independent of circumstance.  It is no different than the beginning in the Garden when man reached out of providence for more.  A lie is a lie no matter how old it is.  The allure of happy deceives our hearts to think we are not enough until we have it all.  The trick is in bringing us to believe that we can get all that we need and setting accusation against God in circumstance affected and influenced by sin welcomed into our world.

 

 

READ MORE AT DEEPER STORY . . . 

coffee and words, almost.

After a long few days of work in Mexico City and returning home with more than memories - exhaustion and 'something I apparently ate' feeling - this morning was an especially relaxed one.  I wish to you a very happy and relaxed weekend!  Here's to another cup of coffee. Here's some warm words for your Saturday.

...and this blast from the past

...and get your workout on

...and a strong case for more sleep, and lastly, one step to making everything OK.

While we are planning a view getaways for summer, we've decided to take these destinations off our list.

coffee and words, almost.

Saturday mornings are the absolute best.  The quiet, the cool and the coffee - I love it!  To make this Saturday even better, my plan is to spend the day working on new dining table set to seat 10.  We look forward to huddling around the table with family and friends, new and old, with good food and words fit to celebrate God's goodness in the thick and thin.  I hope you enjoy these reads!

• Speak to yourself tomorrow with this email delivered time capsule.
• Who doesn't like random tidbits of knowledge - facts, facts and more facts
• I'd love to be writing you, coffee in hand, from here this morning.  That's all.
• Everyone loves a good idiom.  Make sure you're right as rain so as to take the cake and not take the biscuit.
• NYC, yesteryear
• Guide to B+ coffee snobbery. Happy brewing!

fighting gravity.

[gallery link="file" columns="5"] Our words, breath within us, hang heavy holding all reality the day can contain.  We speak.  It is so and it will be.  It being reality, our activity and transitioning possibility.  All hinged upon our words spoken and planted in our lives.  Fruit of our words sprouting from heart.  Make no small mistake, we are not Creator.  We are architects reading the plans and blue prints, the details of how to put together pieces trusting the plan and scheme makes sense.

Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits. (Proverbs 18:21, ESV)

Our lives agree with our speech, the very words spoken from our heart both out loud and public and whispering within.  We agree.  We confess and so we become.  The authority of our words shapes life.  Once believing unreservedly, wildly and free, our dreams and expectations soared to no ceiling.  The vocabulary of heroes not tied down this small over-earthed life.  As child, we could fly.  Now adult, it is easier to walk.  And so do our dreams and speech.  Life does give way to responsibility in the time between child and adult, but the words do not need changing.  They must not.  Or they must be found and rediscovered.

As a parent, I am building the infrastructure within the hearts of my daughters.  So crucial are the words I try to protect and plant.  They are fighting gravity.  We all are, really.  Speak responsively reacting to what we see or release words that we know to be true.  That is the fight against gravity.  We bruise and spill and break forgetting words that stretch us out beyond the surface of life small and calculable.  Our words shrink and so does our heart.  And so does our day.

Emily is an artist.  She’s seven years old now and always has been from the first moment a crayon lifted within her hand creating out of her heart on paper.  It is beautiful.  Her hands move freely to the size of her heart and words.  When I ask if she can draw a particular thing a simple reply reveals it.  “Sure.”  Emily will be an artist as long as she wants to be.  When lines created by her hand look crooked and imperfect and when she no longer thinks so, gravity will be pulling heavy.  Whether or not Emily continues to be an artist is not what I’m fighting for.  The choice of her words and the fact that she believes them for anything in her life both now and forever is.

We are all artists once believing hidden beneath the rubble of life piled high.  We forget when we bruise dismissing words dripping life only as stuff of children and toys.  Let our words hold life that rightly defy the gravity of smaller.

help make a movie::the father effect

John is a giant of a friend of mine.  He is living a dream, making a movie, chasing God-given purpose and needs YOUR help.  Watch the film trailer below and allow yourself the room to get caught up in his story.  It will change people, possibly even a whole generation and a culture.  That's his aim.  He needs you.  You need this movie to be made. Me and the girls lined up in support.  We're committing at least $500.

@johnpfinch || theperfectfather.org || Kickstarter - The Father Effect

What should you do?

1. Go to the Kickstarter page
2. GIVE
3. Tell your friends and followers ...and help make a movie.