bigger than happiness.

 

Happiness is a lie.

And if you live chasing untrue, you spend your days batting at the wind, pulling for an idea that can’t deliver what you think you need.

Happiness will leave you longing for more in its coming and going.

Life unfolds messily mostly without us knowing quite how things will end up.  At best, we can work hard to create the life we think we want.  My schedule fills and my life tightens in my reaching for better, for more, but more often, I find myself worse off the harder I work for what I think I need - in the restless pursuit of happy moments.

You would think the more happy I gather together, the more satisfied and settled of a life I’d lead.  But still, I’m empty in the in-between and hungry.

This manic going after of life is tiresome and besetting.  In this way, happiness is an absolute lie.

If life is measured in how much happy moments we have together, our family is failing and we are taking on water faster than we can bucket it out.  We live in stiff, isolating  moments between laughter and lighter times when we’re all smiling and having a good time.  When we do fall into happiness together, it’s euphoric and addicting, but it cuts when it’s done and we fall out of it disjointed again.

Happiness is a drug we’re all jonesing for.

But there is a better way.

Joy.

For me, joy is the result of love decided, rooted and held to in the swell of good and bad.  It is remembrance that life is not about us, but about something so much better and bigger than ourselves, our dreams and desires and our expectations.  Joy undoes happiness as ultimate authority on how our life measures up.  Joy lifts us in the low and enlightens us all the more in the highs.  It is no secret passage or mediative state to reach when you’ve learned to manage and re-architect disappointment with hold-your-breath positivity.  No, joy is an acceptance that all of life is good and waiting to be lived.  Joy is Heaven’s call now flooding through happiness to penetrate our feeble hearts and remind us that all shall be well, both now and in the life to come.

of sin and self.

Every parent knows the feeling.

The first time I drove on ice the feeling of helplessness disconnected me from my ability to act.  Few times before had I experienced this feeling of a lack of control; definitely never quite on this scale.  Though I spun the wheel the opposite way, me and my little SUV continued to slide into unavoidable disaster.  My knuckles whitened even more, my jaw tightened together as my eyes squinted and brow curled at the sight of another car - all braced for impact.  I came to sudden halt as my tires spun and slid sideways, undeterred into a curb.  Luckily, the curb came before the car, and it was enough.  Of course, I waved and smiled at the other car then slowly moving through the intersection because that’s what inexperienced people who feel the heat of embarrassment do amidst the frantic pulsing of their heart narrowly escaping calamity.

As a parent, I’m growing a bit more accustomed to this feeling.  To be quite forthright, there are many times strength and confidence and experience give way to helplessness.  No matter how much effort I give, we slide out of control toward unavoidable disaster.  My frustration boils over and spills out in the midst of our tense words leaving us even more undone.  And there we stand worlds apart, all on our own, our hearts still pulsing - one the transgressor, the other the transgressed.  Our hearts are one in the same.  They reek of sin and self, of defending and demanding, of wanting control and satisfaction.

Parenting is an art of improved loses.  Those like me who scurry around to gather the pieces breaking busy themselves with falsities such as good, better and perfect, while others who lose well lock sites on tomorrow and refuse little wins in the name of being right and in control.  The key here is tomorrow must contain a hope more promising than a tidy, well-adjusted family.  This is where the Gospel must invade your parenting, eradicating sin and displacing self.

Truth: in you, what your child needs cannot be found.  Only in the truth of the Gospel will your kids find real life.

The polarizing feeling of not understanding your child and not able to connect with your child visits every parental relationship.  No one escapes the mystery of a child growing into their own, still your child but stretching into person and filling their own skin even more.  It’s mired in damnable and divine.  The sentimentalist in me wants to keep them close and controlled, but my responsibility founded in the Gospel is to lead them into tomorrow and then push.

My responsibility informs my action in the moment, or afterward.  It is in that understanding of tomorrow being dependent on my needed guidance in my child’s life today where my head clears from helplessness and fortitude is reclaimed.

little giving king.

To give is to loosen your heart from itself enough to love unmistakably. Forever a war will wage within my chest.  A native land will always be at stake.  Advances will be made and little won battles will convince me that peace is near and the war won, but I will learn that then, too, I must loosen my grip on my own heart and selfish desire.  The war is no less than my heart able to love freely in response to Christ's love allowed to vanquish all selfishly rooted motive smeared ugly by sin and mired in desire.

You see, to give from a place of charity in my heart as a means of merely being charitable and nice is a short-sighted advance in the war of my heart.  The problem is in my every attempt to be good, in every good try to really care for those close to me.  Sooner or later, most often sooner, my grip around my heart will tighten, my love will flatten, my words grow coarser and I will set alone as king of nothing really, just my little demanding heart. If the victory over our selfish hearts lies in love, then we must be givers rather than takers.  Give more than you demand receipt and you will love expertly - but, the caveat to be crossed is giving and loving without measure.  And that can only happen in our hearts, in our families, marriages and varying relationships, when our hearts have been pierced with a Love forever.  In Christ alone do our hearts both die and live, rightfully find end and beautifully are resurrected.

When I became a father, love swelled uncontrollably within the walls of my heart, pushing the limits of possession and responsibility. I felt for someone I didn't yet know but named. Yet quickly, I discovered how selfish my heart truly was.  My schedule was often disrupted for these beautiful little lives that were just so needy and dependent.  For the first time, I felt the regression of love in my selfish frustration as a parent.  And again, I see selfishness in my choosing to limit love in marriage.  It sounds awful, but it's honest.  I married an amazing woman just a handful of months ago, and again, I'm realizing just how selfish I can be.  There's the ebb and flow I alone allow, the back and forth of giving and taking in the form of love and selfishness.  I am one of five in our family and I fight when they want losing a bit more control of how and when life happens. I. Me. I demand for my way, justifying rudeness and trouncing too hard through beautifully blooming love. All in the quest of satisfying me.

Love is patient, love is kind . . . love is Christ.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned,but have not love, I gain nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)

In life as we move in and out of conversations brushing shoulders with others regular to our day and in the intimate circle of family and marriage, the act of giving is holy, set apart from the speed of battling with our hearts, our hands clinching for self-satisfaction.  Let us quiet our efforts, gain victory through Christ and only then, love well.

(image: brianbatista.com)

Jesus doesn't fix anything.

(image credit: Virginia Wieringa)

in a manger still and obscure hidden beneath a star shone bright swaddled in ancient words and found by foreign men bruised heal before lungs even drew a quiet night diseasing evil forever

after all, bruised beats broken and that’s what the angels were singing to shepherds, to wise, to whored and to falsely whole

    we swallow brokenness like the drugs keeping us afloat     our heads nod in restlessness and the receiving     our hearts return us to the well to see the seer

and so this is Christmas all white in the absence of snow our hearts pushed in, and we know the bruises beat the broken

holy night, hushed and aglow promise’s arrival to a heavy handed world time a refugee in the camp Grace swallowed the Virgin knows what mothers do not: how to hold the King of Angels O, come let us adore him, Christ, the Lord

Christmas comes earlier once again.  Sales announce the season and joy fills our hearts.  It seems as though more of Christmas is lost in commercialism each year.  The story, faded into well balanced nativity sets sold for shelves and lawns grows more native in an adapted knowing that Christ came so we spread good will and cheer.

But look at the night.  Jesus doesn’t fix anything.  In fact, things get worse; a lot worse.  The king of the moment feels threatened at the report of foreign wise men arrived to see the foretold promise under a star.  So the king commands all babies under the age of two be found and murdered.  The people of the foretold promise bleeding again under the tyrannical rule of other men.  I’d say things worsened. We’ve heard the story bookended by Christmas and Easter unfold - the child grew.  The story builds anticipation as some realize the Promise arrived in a manger, grew into a man, touched people like God.  He gathered the bruised and buried the broken.  And then the story reaches climax with his public, gory death - worsened once again.  A strong shift of circumstance happens in Jesus’ resurrection, and then, a sort of to be continued hangs as those closest to him watch him ascend into the heavens.

And here we are.  Holders of the promise awaiting God’s glorious arrival, as a people once did.  So much of our world is broken; our very lives broken, too.

What if Jesus comes hushed again, undetected in our world obsessed with its own healing, demanding all must be whole before all can be all right?

Jesus doesn’t fix anything.  He comes.

Into the worst conditions, among a family gone amok, through the unchangeable circumstance of death and all the more that can go wrong, Jesus comes right into the middle where you are and abides.

And so, this is Christmas, this is Advent, this is promise and this is Jesus.  O, come let us adore him and belong to a Savior come and not a known cure.

the glow beyond then.

Few days I go back, deep into the abyss where those days hold the stillness of a mausoleum, memories cataloged beauty and yesterday.

When I do revisit those days, I find the most perplexing piece of my life lived.  Like a garden pushed up through soil holding death and pieces of what once was, I only gaze upon goodness flowering death and disappointment, a sure evidence of God’s immeasurable grace.

And soon, another evidence of good grace stands ready to fill our lives raising us from four journeying hearts to five. I can’t help but realize God foreknew of the goodness to come, all seen now and much more far into tomorrow.  Even in the darkest days following my first wife’s death, the horizon glowed with hope and passage to promise.  Little felt sturdy under our feet and the present day then seemed to stretch longer than my resolve.  Still the horizon glowed in contrast to the faded hues of then and whispered invite and rest.  When we shuffled lost and weak stepped and she meandered through life sure but curiously wondering of beyond, he knew.

Into the new horizon, the new day, hope swallowed death in a momentary microcosm of eternity arriving as always echoed.  Only weeks away from the light of new day warming our faces, we couldn’t be more ready to enter in.

Let me be lovingly clear, she’s not the horizon, nor the salvation; she’s the evidence of his resolved grace.  And grace continues to be the most formative teacher shaping life beautiful behind and warm joy ahead.  God doesn’t keep score or measure fair of all good and bad in our lives somehow having to managing balance.  Grace invades where it’s not welcomed, grabs our hand and leads us through.

The new day pushing in requires a new me – the days after yesterday brought me here.  Through those grief wrenched days following death, I learned to be a different man who sweats the same, yet talks with a heart hallowed, then filled again.  Grace primed me in my darkest to stand, to love and belong again.  Death fits as a defining memory behind and little more than a looming reality somewhere ahead, while life rushes deeper and freer closer to the feet of God.

And so life independent must swing to life together, merging messy, lines blurred into a new color of two now together.  Much of my life has been a strong lean into grace and furious falling forward each day.  The approach to each day fixed into a rhythm of not focusing so much on how we made it as a family so long as we did make it, but life merging from the four of us to the five of us demands more stability and intentionality, not mere happenstance and butterflies.  My love must be ready for more than just affectionate high fives and romantic date nights.  After all, she is someone my heart will be tied to and my feet will find cadence with until there's little distinction.

I’m learning how to practice love that cuts through me – my fears, my circumstance, my past, my worries, my mistakes, my deficiencies – for sake of belonging to her and us and now and promise not always seen.

[II Cor 4:16-18]