a note to fathers, and one for me to remember.

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footsteps-in-the-sand-2 Unpack.

Unload.

Give up. Stop.

There is One who's valiantly walked a sorrowful path our feet could never belong to, who's shoulders bore burden alien to our own, who's heart swallowed life and death, fear and frailty, strength and worry and owns belonging both now and forevermore.  The role of hero forever defined in victim so there would be no more standing alone, no more holding the skies from falling, balancing plates spinning or attempt at making life better.

That role is taken, and dad, that is not yours.

Sweat of your brow, brawn of your hand, both feeble at best; wrong at worst.

The struggle to a better life is not in your own effort.  In fact, better life is not real but a fallacy we strain for measured in possession, power and position.  The more we acquire the smaller we become, dwarfed amidst maintaining all we own.  We forget value and what really matters.  Your family doesn’t need more.  They need you.  And the best of you.

Sure, we must work with diligence and effort, but God does not bless your hard work.  God blesses the humble of heart, the man whose hands lay open before Him with full awareness of limitation and broken heart.  Effort will never earn you anything in God’s eyes.  He recognizes humble hearts who confess their need for rescue, for help.

The most effective move you will ever make as a father is to stop the struggle and in holy pause, learn how to follow the path Christ pioneered for us all.

Your family needs a leader; one who leads fearlessly and follows close.

Give your family a better life, not in possession piling high and then forgotten, but in grace realized, love practiced and peace reinforced.

Start by letting go of the heavy day you know, the one that owns your time and affection.  Open your hands calloused by the ineffectual strain of earning a better life to a new way of dependence and reliance and following.

The happiest of Father’s Day to you as you rest in His immeasurable ability to give you all that you (and your family) need.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. (James 1:17, ESV)

 

(image credit: unknown)

dreams belong to the brave.

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The willingness to show up changes us. It makes us a little braver each time. -Brene Brown

 

Showing up holds simple meaning.  There’s little complexity to it.  No one mistakes a person’s intent when they show up.  That person is there for a reason, on purpose.  Maybe without most of the answers, but that’s not the point.  Showing up defines us.

:: a person who wakes up :: a person who doesn’t quit :: a person unwilling to accept probably not :: a person who sees past difficulty

Bravery is little more than standing when circumstance demands you sit.  There’s little strength to it.  The bravest of people don’t feel brave, maybe foolish.  You know a brave man when you see him.  He’s probably more bent by life’s weight than others who sit.  Bravery names you.

There comes a time when you wake up enough to stars colliding, the sky lightening enough and betting the farm turns value on its head to actually making a lick of sense.  We all come to this moment at least once in life when what we dream of makes just enough sense to jump.  In that burning moment, we either do or we dam it shut, excused from sensibility and safety.

Why should it make sense?

Take a look at all things too big.  That’s just what those things were before they awed onlookers, too big – a novel, painting, building, poem, sculpture, song - some dreamer pulled down the sky and made what was seen.  After everyone knows them brave and consistent.

I’d be more willing to say that showing up and bravery are of so much more importance than the result of what you can see.  For what you can see, is the historical telling of someone unwilling to let a dream die.

Now you must ask yourself why dreams are so important that we should not let them die.

Dreams – what we wish to do in life and hope to find true – sprout from the core of who we are and can become.  I believe God gives dreams and we awake to them as we live the life given us.  We all have dreams, hopes and aspirations.  They belong to those made brave by showing up.

For me, the dream was to communicate life and faith and their often times strained interaction through story; to write books and author ideas.  The book I just finished, my first, is an exact product of the simplicity of showing up day after day.

I hope to continue the discipline and brave abandon of just showing up.  I’d invite you to join me being brave in going after our dreams.  Wake to something good forgotten, dismissed in simplicity and just begin to show up.

 

skies bending.

in

road-to-horizon

I remember the light fading then the road blurring irreverently skies bending like light fractured in the sharp lines of a prism, prison to me the day abandoned one fallen asleep to everyone gone on the bus, in houses, happy, ready for the day next outside, streets wet with tears left by those wandering

I recall clearly salvation in lines, pen strokes drawing tomorrow coloring clouds the hue of grace found

in times catching we see what we know in His appearing dark laid at ease turmoil rested and worry abated the day not yet come had a place for me, a seat saved for me

 

worry and wonder in Oklahoma, life broken & beyond || A DEEPER STORY post

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sparrow at sunset  

Night stretches thin,

black,

like a stare seeing clearer than yesterday but maybe more lost than then when night felt contained by good warm day.

Not so.  Maybe not for a while.

Definitely not during those nights now and ahead lingering lonely, not able to be chased away by the brightest of memories and the strongest of smiles.  No, they will hurt and break and not belong.

The world will move on without them and they will float carried by tears that feel like waves and questions that feel like fire.

And always, why slivers in.

:::::::

Those are brothers, fathers, mothers, sisters and friends in Oklahoma, just as they were in Boston, here in Texas and in every breaking moment around the world.  Tragedy comes close, so close that it sometimes breaks through disrespectful of words like promise and safety and goodness.

. . . continuing this post at A DEEPER FAMILY

(image credit: Flicker, Big Grey Mare)

3 ways I know myself well.

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Boat Boy Sunset (Cambodia) by nabilkannan I am worthless.

Thirty six years into days given as free opportunities and I’m still tripping over clumsy steps, breaking promises faster than they have room to actually settle in place, speaking dishonest words, doing dishonorable things and managing to mess up with fervent regularity.  Left to myself, my actions and intentions cannibalize my heart into fragmented pieces consuming life selfishly, reducing me valueless in those moments to anything but my own desire.

Like a moth to flame do my actions draw to mistake.

I am weak.

One would think that after 432 months survived, strength would be an aged virtue.  There’s no virtue in these bones.  Strength invades in losing moments when unfortunate circumstance boasts victory, but I don’t really know strength any better than I know magic.  I am not strong.

Like a treeling bent in howling winds does my heart run ground low in adversity.

I am not good.

After 13,148 days deep into the life given me, I am no more good than the babe I started as.  In fact, maybe I’m worse the older I get, tangled in what I think wise and noble.  My heart breeds contempt for all holy.  It doesn’t fit naturally.  My heart is incompatible with the good illusion I project which reveals just how undermining it really is.

Like a peddler selling something his hands didn’t create nor own, I hang my life in the day hoping to convince onlookers and passerby's.

And here is mystery softly rebirthing me in moments broken and fractured by my own worthlessness, weakness and badness - love.  In each creaking day leading me to 36 years old, I am loved completely.  Never can I outrun it; no where can I go to escape its reach; nothing I can ever do to cancel it.  God’s incalculable, immeasurable, confusing love inverts the reality of what I know to be true in my heart - the worthless, weak, bad - to hold and own a new value to the measure of exact opposite.  He loves me to worthy, to strong and to good.  His love regenerates me leaving me someone new ...again.

I stand readied for all ahead by God’s love that only consumes the evil of my heart in all of its brooding and repetitive evil.  More than these 3 ways in which I know myself so well, I’m learning one, God’s love, which masters them all in my receding and allowance of that Love owning me.

Another year.  Amen.

 

[meditate::John 3.16-21]

Featured Artist :: Art House Dallas

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arthousedallas2 I don't think of myself as an artist.

I should say, I don't always think of myself as an artist, but I am accepting of myself as an artist more and more these days.

I think it's because I haven't always thought of myself as a real writer.  Maybe a hobbyist at best, a pretender at worst.  Even half way through writing my first book, I'd tell others at art events, those who'd ask what I did, that I was in sales.  My response was a downplay, a deflect of attention.  After all, who wants to fail or come up short despite all effort given?  So I'd work tirelessly, part privately, on the manuscript of my first book while not admitting to being a writer - an artist.

Realizing (and admitting to) the value in my art and dream of being a writer began to surface after introduced to Art House Dallas.  Suddenly, I felt connected to plenty of other artsy folk who learned to not merely hear the echo of dreams within, but learned to esteem creative dreams within and wield creativity realized for a greater purpose.

A forged statement repeated often in the community of Art House captures its heart and meaning: "Cultivating creative community for the common good — encouraging everyone to live imaginative and meaningful lives."

I'm both thankful to be part of that community and honored to be this month's Featured Artist.  Read the Featured Artist interview below where I discuss my creative process, habits and upcoming book, "Earth & Sky."

:::::::

What is “Earth & Sky: a beautiful collision of grace and grief,” all about?  What inspired you to write it?

In a word: life.  The book is a memoir recounting the sudden, unexpected death of my wife nearly 3 years ago.  Far more than a somber story remembering a life passed in the wake of inexplicable tragedy, Earth & Sky journeys into the heart of grief, grace guiding into a new day.  The correlation of earth and sky lies in the connection between and interaction of human frailty (us - earth) with faith (God - sky).  Sinking in deep loss, God pursued me into the darkened depths of my heart wasting away in grief.

This story is not mine alone.  It belongs to my three little daughters as well.  One life that we knew together suddenly ended with no warning and left us dislodged from any sense of familiar belonging.  I was widowed and they were motherless and half-orphaned.  Both the story and journey belong to all four of us as we learned to live life anew and rediscover happiness, joy, meaning and reason. The inspiration to write Earth & Sky sprung up in desire to chronicle our path together through grief.

Writing about loss is obviously challenging.  C.S. Lewis', “A Grief Observed,” is a sometimes excruciating classic in the genre.  Were you influenced by any such works? Did you even plan to write a book at the start?

Lewis’ words echoed a strong sense of familiarity in the writing of my book.  Regarding pain, Lewis poignantly wrote, “It removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of a rebel soul.”  His words had a way of speaking life into my soul in the words giving witness to the dark treading through his own rebel heart.

I wrote as a means of bleeding out restless emotions swirling about my heart and head.  Initially, I captured raw emotions in poetry which gave me generous boundary lines to explore and confess darker fears, thoughts and prayers without worry of much sensible literary structure.  Many of these poems are built into the prose of the book.  The poetic spillings served as a cathartic exercise so I continued to write as I began to shape the content into story arch.

The most helpful influence in not only writing the book, but in healing and moving forward revealed itself in Kubler-Ross‘ book, “On Grief and Grieving.”  I found purpose in crafting my story after spending time in this particular book where she and David Kessler expand on her model of the 5 stages of grief.

// CONTINUE READING AT ART HOUSE DALLAS