the discipline of love.

“Love is friendship set on fire.”Jeremy Taylor

“Does everyone leave?”

My daughter, aged young, eyes wide observing, told me stories about friends’ families broken or breaking.  There was a curiosity in her asking.  A wondering of love building expectations to be held in her heart for now and ahead.  My hands clinched the steering wheel a bit stronger, and I sat a little stiffer in hearing her say of her friend believing her mom would probably return in a couple days.

“She said probably in a couple days her mom will be back.” “Do you think so, Dad?” “Does everyone leave?”

Our hearts diseased with self, infected with independence roam to be satisfied.  The satisfaction, we call love, our hearts happy and served and content in the shallow.  The deep undisturbed.  Years together do not equal love.  Close but not connected, no matter how long, is like neighbors under one roof with the option of moving never officially dismissed.  Love is not found in a bar or a car.  I heard that somewhere when I was young, and it’s actually great advice.  A precise uncovering of love truer than we are led to know.  We find love not where we look, but in the exact spot we allow ourselves to be found.  To be found can be quite troubling when we are too busy searching and grabbing and keeping for ourselves happiness.  So we synonymously connect sex to love and cheapen the chance, run eventually and our hearts shut a bit tighter.  Our hearts are not conditioned to love, but we want it.  Happy.  Everyone wants happy and that proves problematic.  The divide ever widening between wanting love and actually getting there.  Instead, love is romanticized and bludgeoned to an unrecoverable end with thoughts of smiles and sex and white picket fences forever.  What few know and fewer find is that work is required.  Love is discovered in death.  It takes a strong discipline to die enough for room to be made in your heart for another and you in theirs.  Both forever and lasting.

That’s the stuff of true romance.  Not trouncing lightly on rose pedals and lying easy under an always clear sky, but cutting through brush losing the path in steps, crossing rushing rivers in storming skies and forging up slippery slopes.  Love is discovery and adventure.  Love is sweat and swearing while you reach to pull out of moments when you only want to slide back into selfish alone.  Sitting at the dinner table colder than happy, ready to run, pushing out your clinched fist to open your hand to hold the hand known by your heart and wearing your symbol given on a much sunnier day, and allowing the moment to pass without words but together, there in the moment that is love, too.  That is right where love deepens and soars both at the same time.  In the discipline, love is truly found. “No, not everyone leaves.  But I want you to know that relationships are tough.  They take work and are not always easy but always worth it.  Always.”

Love is found in the giving not receiving.  It is in the receiving that you hold it as love holds a heart that was once two now lost singularly.

worry and the waste.

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"Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on.  ...And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life ...or a single cubit to his stature?” Matthew 6:25-27

Falling in and out of several dreams does not make for restful sleep.  Somehow in the flash of dreams and characters and unfitting scenes, all of the fabricated and half truths melted into one shifting timeline moments before my alarm sounded.  A house never visited nestled in country quiet, dark and bare... a crumbling staircase, the first starting nine feet off the ground... the new tattoo on my arm, a symbol and reminder of hope and perseverance, skin tattered and worn... a cousin with a different face, a friend familiar I’ve never known, a plot undiscoverable, I’m just running somewhere either to or from, chasing or escaping, but definitely running.  I’m breathing heavy, eyes closed, in another world where things may be more actual than when I wake eyes opened.  I woke tired.  And worried.

There’s plenty in life that does not make complete sense to me in the current.  Much to leave to worry and thieving nights.  Distance, that is what we worry about.  Where our feet stand and where we should be or want to be or need to be, that is the distance.  The money we have and the money we need gives room for more worry about our job and our future and our family and our happiness, our goals and expectations.  And then worry really opens the box.

What about us, who we really are?  Am I enough?  The weight and value of my existence, do they matter?  Do I matter?

Worry is a descending staircase unending into the darkness of doubt.  The more worry, the less faith.  Moments wasted.  Worry the culprit.  We, the worrier, not the lifeless activity of worrying, but our engagement and giving in to it.  In worry we waste minutes, hours, whole days and weeks.  All moments given us to live and discover, to succeed and fail and succeed, to make a path and leave a mark on the years and patch of earth we dwell.

With ease we run in circles carving deeper lines of worry about everything and anything, our faith diminishing while life keeps a straight line.

Life is filled with unresolve, unfigurable, breaks and pauses and yet to be determined occasions.  There is so much to worry about especially when we must wait, cannot see or even imagine an outcome better than worse.  But there is faith and trust and living with eyes closed.

Morning begins me already sunk deep in worry.  How are the kids, really?  Will we be happy finally?  Will I get from here to there and set my feet literal in dreams hanging still?  All answers ringing maybe.  None more valuable than the life added in moments and occasions.  Detached from the answers or resolve is hope full in each day dark and light, heavy and whole.  Make no mistake, each day a gift given to be opened and lived.  The next another gift all of its own to be opened and lived after in the moment given.

And so with this new day, I let go of yesterday clinging stinking of both what is and what is no more and I clinch what is given.  As many times necessary, I repeat this action.  In my life, it happens to be necessary very much and often.

exactly where I put it.

[gallery link="file" columns="5"] Endings.  Life all about endings and completion in the form of accomplishment and achievement.  Hours yielded to those and things not owning our lives, but we give it, our lives and how we live it, to that which is fleeting and temporal.  No end in sight, but a brighter, happier horizon told to be somewhere out there if we just keep giving to that which can never give back lasting or missed moments or happiness.  Then you wake up one day a stranger in your own life, unknown to those and that which is lasting and forever.

Pictures must be evidence of life lived and moments shared connecting not merely observed.  The form and shape and life filling every frame, I want to know them, give to it and forever be connected, not simply associated.  It matters.  Life is passing and will not stop but we control flow and speed of time moving.

I work in a very corporate world which is good and not evil, but will take as much and sometimes more than you give.  A friend offered me a job a while back.  In every way better, but one which I didn’t notice initially.  Pay was substantial.  Potential was unreal.  “In ten years, if everything works like I’m planning, I’ll be set financially.”  That sounded amazing.  Who doesn’t want promising potential that is very real such as what my friend is banking on?!  But.  There is always a cost.  No shortcuts lead rightly to happiness and fulfillment.  The but, the hours and commitment required.  Longer hours.  Much, much longer than the day burns bright and warm.  Always available.  The but and true cost to the potential of great reward and a set future which is never really set no matter how hard we try or how much our brow pours out, time.  It would have owned me as I gave for what I affirmed as the greater good.  An ending and glowing completion in the form of accomplishment and achievement, status and success.

So where does the time go?

Lost in shuffling feet and looking eyes searching for brighter day, time is given and discarded.  The beauty of aging in my daughters’ eyes, the sound of unhinged laughter disconnected from circumstance, their unknowing still and needing always, the intimacy of being wanting to be held still, sleepy mornings rushing for school, ballet, basketball, the park, bicycles, hiking, crayon drawings, family cook night, date nights ...all, and so much more, given for what doesn’t love back and only leaves.  There is one ending trumping all and for me, it will be three in the form of hands holding, open to receive and give love.  Time never meant to be master, but we bow.  Time to us given as a gift to make beauty lasting in the space allowed us.

‘Wake up today,’ ringing in my ears.  ‘Be alive right here,’ beating in my heart.

One day you will wake up and notice life grown and mature all around you.  On that morning, may our hearts be full and time a friend and may memories of days behind lived as fully as we could in the time allowed warm us.  I want to know my daughters and them know me better.  My biggest regret would be for time to distance us because I gave too much room for what never really mattered in the first place.

So where does the time go? Exactly where I put it.

saving a little girl.

[gallery link="file" columns="5"] We are a family of four.  One dad, me.  Three daughters, them.  Four of us together learning life again.  The beauty peeking in every one of their eyeful glances and playful smiles strengthens me and opens my eyes to see.  They are leaning on a man to show them how to be women.  It is more appropriate than I ever imagined.  In many treacherous ways, it is harder to become a woman than it is to be a man.

A study found that on average, women have 13 negative body thoughts per day and that 97 percent of women in the study admitted to having at least one “I hate my body” moment daily. 80% of women who answered a People magazine survey responded that images of women on television and in the movies make them feel insecure. In one study, three out of four women stated that they were overweight although only one out of four actually were. Some of the pictures of the models in magazines do not really exist. The pictures are computer modified compilations of different body parts. One half of 4th grade girls are on a diet. 95% of individuals who diet as opposed to those who follow a healthy food plan will gain their lost weight back in one to five years. 81% of ten year old girls are afraid of being fat. A study found that adolescent girls were more fearful of gaining weight, than getting cancer, nuclear war or losing their parents. When preschoolers were offered dolls identical in every respect except weight, they preferred the thin doll nine out of ten times.

There it is.  That thing robbing happiness and fullness with ease and with little fight.  Everyone just gives in and maybe enables thieving hands to pull long and reshape lasting what little girls see with innocent, bruised eyes.  The sun only shines on thin.  Smiles made to effortlessly open the heart and bear the soul to broad possibility wear loosely intent on bowing always to generated images of people that never existed.  It is oppressive, servitude hanging the price of freedom in happiness on a sliding scale forever sloped unreachable.  It is tainting the divine.  Every eye, ear and nose, a content stroke of the creator’s hand.  Beauty skin deep, surface holding, mutes love true and absolute, actual gorgeousness of individual.  Shapes and sizes, height and weight, blemish, curves and lines, all beholding and unveiling beauty in individuality.  No two alike.  Neither should they ever be.  Every one holding beauty deep and divine.

The disease feeding on socially acceptable, preying on innocent while little hearts still warm in the nest.  Wings forming strong maimed as they stretch to embrace life before flight.  Cut all the same length.  The world is flat again.

As a single father of three little girls quickly approaching double-digit age, this breaks my heart and overwhelms and intimidates me.  Tears welled up as images of my little girls innocent and free moved through my thoughts.  I can only run in panicked circles warding off these thieves.  But that will buy little time.  The windows will break, glass will shatter and they will come in uninvited and despised.  They are coming.  I am waiting.  Images manufactured precisely.  Idols all empty little hearts aspire to please.  Models that don’t exist.  Women that don’t fit.  Empty little hearts always wanting to be filled hungry just to be held as they are, where they are, how they are.

My little women, do they feel the weight?  More frightening even, do they identify the wrong as right?  Are their little knees still scuffed with dirt and sweat fading too fast giving way to a thieving normalcy, a must achievable mold they must fit into?

Someone needs to yell something different, look into their eyes beholding and everyday grab that disease thieving by the throat, crush it underfoot and open the door to beauty actual.  Let the lies swarm and pick and invade.  I am the destroyer of deceitful beauty, treading heavy footed on every lie making room for itself in their filling little hearts.

Reading through this information my heart caught flame with fear and resolve.  Acceptable images of how women are said to be but were never intended to be or should be influencing all watching, capturing the attention of those needing to be caught.  It is not right.

How do you undo an empire but by one brick at a time?

I have three.  They will be loosed with the continual help of the one divine.

a shadow.

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He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. Psalm 91:1

"The nights are loneliest."

Standing there in a room of his most loved, he was all alone.  So was I.  I found myself connected to more than words, to the disconnect and fear floating in his eyes.  The years stacked neatly for them.  They were happy.  I could tell by the way he spoke.  The papers that I had for him to sign seemed so insignificant.  His words rang familiar.  She was not yet gone, but close.  Death ready to come and it needed to happen.  She had suffered and battled with disease long enough.  He was waiting as she was letting go.  I had to reel him in out of the sacredness waiting with her, his love, to leave to discuss her end of life care.  He signed the hospice papers, looked long into my eyes and thanked me genuinely.  I heal a bit more every time.  Much like a victim, a survivor, the one remaining shell shocked and moving slower than life surrounding, I watched as he stood tall by her side.  He knew that the path ahead would be trying.  So did I.  It’s the one I’ve been walking.

They all forget.  The next day just happens as the ones before and the ones following.  What's worse is the thought of them remembering at the sight of you.  A walking tragedy, polarized.  The one left to tell of perseverance and the found silver lining.  Most days, especially close to the interruption, you fake it hiding in a facade of strength and learned living.  You get lost in the day. I still forget even now.  Lapses of time, circumstance and reality erase death in fast fleeting moments.  I forget I'm a widower.  I forget I'm alone.  Until night comes and busyness fades with the day.  Then I remember again very well the cause for all this commotion, this upheaval of life.  Disruption.  No one likes to be stopped mid-conversation with words still left to say.  Interrupted and the words left just hanging with no place to land.

There you go.  That's the prickly heart of the matter.  Life interrupted.  Left hanging, suspended and final.

Loneliness is lost.  Deeper than companionship so sweet and identifying is the wandering afterward.  I wander as I wonder.  What of life now?  This dark interlude.  Does it give way to something better?  Some place happier?  Will life again ever resemble the day lost?  Should it?

I am convinced ever so deeply that it will, but when, where, what and how, require trust and faith that is, in spots, thin.

This is nothing new.  I've been lonely since the moment she left.  Many steps through treacherous impasses have made me more honest and bare.  Being honest about being lonely feels good to me signaling stability and security.  Admitting to loneliness for me is saying that I do not know the way, I am searching for place to rest, I need people close to me more now.  I am more vulnerable.  I am weaker.  All signs of greater strength of lasting, guiding value.

Being lonely has never meant being desperate for companionship.  That will come just as soon as it again makes sense, and it will, but that is eternally secondary to finding my way now and discovering purpose in loneliness.  In loneliness, I find great strength.  In solitude, I find solidarity that I've not known before.  Because I need it, it is there.  Companionship with God.  The Author of life littering my path with his graces leading to shelter.  Covering me in storms. Finding me in fog.  Stabilizing me in turbulence.  Allowing me to hide when I need and breathe when I cannot.

A real God finding me amidst real wrong in real life.  This is good and unique.  Dare I even think it, a blessing.

My prayer is that I always remember the bountifulness of these lonely nights leading me to stronger shelter.  One day, probably sooner than later, life will be settled wondrously and clean.  Fuller.  In that goodness, apart from this loneliness, may I always remember this couch, the silence, the distance and the ringing of questions.  For these are the beams of his shelter in which I dwell.

FEAR and the sinking.

[gallery link="file" columns="5"] FEAR: The best behind me. FEAR: Life will always be this way, shadowed in loss. FEAR: My daughters always wounded learn to survive, emotionally maimed. FEAR: All goodness is fleeting and happiness constantly reframing. FEAR: Love past will suffice. FEAR: I will not be enough. FEAR: These fears and more will condition me to loss, shrink me to small, shell me.

I am dangerously holding disappearing beneath wave’s surface foaming tossing and beating losing and dreaming eyes that uncover the hand folding the lights bright blinking

I am afraid of the door closing fading in the sound creaking bending and bowing seeping and hoping my hand warm on the knob turning yesterday leaving

Then he asked them, “Why are you afraid?  Have you still no faith?”

The wind no more.  The waves still and inanimate reflecting sun as glass.  Their feet still soaked.  Hearts still pounding.  Breaths still drawing deep and out of rhythm.  His eyes disturbingly calm as if nothing ever did happen giving little value to the panic of moments before.  He’s wet, too.  And he gets it, the moment before.  His eyes so calm and seemingly disconnected did see waves and squint in howling wind, but they saw something else.  Now.  Afterward even then.

‘Why are you afraid’ invites us out of wind and wave and panic and dread and finish and into his moment standing now.  Afterward even then.

Staring at the day wondering when it will release, waiting for things and people and love to all make sense again.  To be well fit for the life so bright just right there at my doorstep, but tripping over toys and clothes and books and dreams while trying to open the door.  That is grief.  Excusing yesterday and wishing it well.  Embracing now and forthcoming holding it so tight and familiar.  Wanting so badly for that to be now.  But that is not rescue or reason.  That is reward.

So what, then?  Faith.  Have you none still?

These are my fears minus a few howling throughout the day darkening my sight, damning tomorrow in the tumult now.  These are the things that must be let go if I am going to do more than write and hope for tomorrow.

There are things now maybe ruined by my hand not letting go of fear my eyes gazing into the storm giving reality to what ifs and hope nots.  Fear becomes us when we just cannot, will not let go and when we run around in panic that the settling of how things now will apparently always be.  Fear became me and changed me altering words and sight.  The disease of losing is fear not loss.  Loss is the lasting reality left in the wake of fear.

Grief is faith.  It is releasing what can no longer be had and opening to newness in time.  To trust his eyes standing there right in front of me.  He’s wet, too, dripping with the moment we are both in together.  And all of him, the eyes calm, him stained constant with the moment whispers comfortably, ‘Why are you afraid?’

FEAR is a thief with pockets full of surrender. ASSURANCE: II Tim 1:7; Mark 4:40

empty pockets.

[gallery link="file" columns="5"] What of home draws us in but the hope of being, the want of becoming?  Like a steadied dock secure at the edge of waves tossing with random relent whether coming or going or sinking strength abandoned, home is escape from and into all at once.  Home is hope.  Chance to burn clean and chase the lingering, the demons that don’t give way to another day and bones kept together in shadows present hugging the papering walls of a heart deconditioned to the Hand holding.  They don’t quit.  Don’t quiet.  You just get older.  Home is safe ...or it was ...meaning it is.  Home, no matter how disturbed or how sound, always waits for return.  Homecoming.

On this road I learned to run.  Really run, not carefree and roaming, but with direction and time.  “Go!”  Lean into the wind still warm though Fall my breath uneasy and shallow, lines blurring.  Legs on fire as my chest caves and expands in rhythms unnatural.  I cross the line determined as end.  Breath shallow still gasping for something deeper and filling.  I walk back to the beginning lose myself in dreams of being faster than I ever really was.

“How was that?” “Good, man.  Line up.  Let’s do it again.  This time faster.”

It was here on this road adorned with the name, Colby, a warmth in life cooled to thinning memories that I bled.  Where my dad effectively managed time and molded resolve stubborn in my bones still.  The paved black road pushing hard against my feet only skimming and surfacing determined to move with greater speed each time.  It is the fifth or sixth sprint interval.  I’m becoming more of a machine driven by ticking time and endings running to produce earning time as fast as I can.  Typically, I ran to complete ten.  Right in the middle I was best, my fastest.  I loosened enough to move faster and then I weaned.  At ten, I was done completely in the sense of done.  Tired of running and tired of proving.  Done.

If I’m honest and see through, slightly opaque, that street, this one that caught and held my sweat and fears taught me.  I learned how to earn on that street.  I’ve been an earner pretty much ever since.

Acceptance. Time. Success. Progress. Love...

All earned by my attempts at being better.  Where is a heavy hand holding a destructive tool when you need it?  Some things must break to transfigure whole.

I am not patient.  Not for a lack of ease or an aggressive temperament, but a preoccupation with earning my keep and keeping what’s earned.  Proving, pushing, giving up when my empty attempts stack higher than my expectation.  Then I wean.  And I’m done.  Like barely standing straight after ten breathing busy and losing count.

'Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.'

Life is easy and so is home really.  We struggle and kick, moan and wince at days and events bigger and testier than the rest.  We judge life as harder but we are just holding and keeping.  Earning.  Leaving home and that street has been a slow unraveling to grace and ease.  'Come to me...'  when all I want is to recoil and fold ...when the hands of the watch stop with a click and I’m still running to the end.  That’s when.  Stop counting and straining and tangling with time and earning.  Rest and be well in the hope saving opening the door home to be human and honest again and to become an acceptor rather than an ever struggling earner.