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.

:::::::

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.

:::::::

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

how cooking saved us.

“I love you, Daddy.” Those four words uttered unprompted and purely spoken from the heart, not simply the mouth, sets my world on ablaze.  Everything is alright then.

No argument is too thick to separate, no struggle too tangling, no misunderstanding too alienating, no hurt too deep; in the hearing and in the give and take of those words, all is set aright, and I’m reminded that we are okay again.

Parenting requires full effort. I should be clear.  Effective parenting demands full effort.

And, of course, prayer ...lots of prayer.

:::::::

When I became a single parent, I no longer had a choice in how much effort I’d give.  The girls looked to me for everything.

“Dad, what should I wear?” “What should I get my friend for her birthday?” “Can you do my hair?” “Can we go and get a manicure?” “Can you meet my friend’s mom so she can sleep over?” ...the friend, not the mom:) “Dad, I think I need a bra?” “Dad, what is sex?”

The first few months as a single dad felt like an absolute whirlwind.  I was widowed and they were half orphaned.  Emotions ran deep and erupted frantically at times.  Many of those early days were spent just getting through the day to find any space to feel comfortable in our own family.  An obvious void rested heavy, them motherless and grieving with an inexperienced single father.  Granted, I had the enormous support from my mother who has been nothing short of amazing, but at the end of the day and in the settling dust, I am my daughters’ only parent.  It is both my privilege and responsibility to show them the way, teach them how and lead them into tomorrow.

I say to them often, especially in tougher times when they are hurting or frustrated, “God gave you me and me you.  And he didn’t make a mistake.”

Honestly, I was as lost in parenting as I was in grief.

So I went for a walk and under a starlit sky, glowing alive, I lost that part of me dying and came back a different man.

I wasn’t a dad, and I wasn’t single.  I was, and would be from then forward, a parent, open-hearted to life with my three beautiful daughters through the pain, the hurting, the confusion and the lonely.

The stars just made perfect sense in a whole new way that night.  The way they hung perfectly, positioned precisely and shined brightly millions of miles away, as if broadcasting a message of hope in the endless panoramic expanse of the night sky, whispering order and security and future, raptured me from living as a victim in a day I felt I didn’t belong to.  Instead, I felt closer to God that night standing under the stars, his stars, and asked simply of him to just help me build the family that we, my wife and I, once started together.

Slowly over the next few weeks, we began to grow again.  I wasn’t as concerned with how to necessarily raise three little girls however little girls should be.  I would raise them in the exact context we newly lived in.

I introduced them to adventure to keep their hearts curious and growing.  We attacked our weaknesses together.  I learned how to do a pony tail, and they learned how to fish.  They taught me how to paint nails, and I showed them how to scout a hiking trail.  Our life together will always be my most beautiful treasure.  I absolutely adore it.

Tonight, as on most Wednesday evenings, we continued on with one of my favorite new family traditions: family cook night.  It’s quite simple of a tradition.  We cook, together.

For us, the kitchen is definitely an adventure.  Our measurements are generous, and each of us thinks we really know what we’re doing.  Emily’s a pro at cutting anything; Elizabeth expertly dabbles in everything; and Chloe can stir like a boss.  Honestly, it’s crazy stressful watching it all happen, but the payoff is magic.  Our hearts are open, conversation flows freely, music typically plays in the background and we just go at it celebrating our togetherness in a new family way.

When the kitchen lights are turned off and the sink is full, half of dirty dishes and half clean, those four words find me, and again, I’m reminded that we are all okay.

:::::::

Not many parenting techniques will pay off quite like the simplicity of simply being together fully in the moment.  Everything thick and troubling is cut right through.

As parents, time is a commodity that we sometimes don’t have much of, but the more you generously give of the time you have, fully invested into the lives of your children, the greater and more fruitful of a payoff you’ll share in the years ahead.  Together.

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A Deeper Family :: Grief, 3 little girls and God somewhere.

Recently, I received an invitation to join a team of storytellers focused on drawing back the curtain on family by sharing pieces of life both lived through and learned.  I'm quite honored to be part of such a talented team of writers.  Diversity runs rampant between us, but one thing weaves consistent through us all: God.  And a few virtues we feel endearing and necessary: honesty, vulnerability, grace and tomorrow. Below is an excerpt from my first post for A Deeper Family.

It’s been two years since my wife drew her last breath in an ICU room after five days of being supported by medicine and machines, and finally I feel as though we are just beginning to level out.  You could imagine the polarized difference between a household balanced with two loving parents being reduced to half and the weight it would add.  Add sorrow and grief into the mix and the emptiness of daughter without mother.  And now add the emotional differences of three little girls and a hollowed out, shell-shocked dad.  That’s a recipe for implosion, full meltdown.

Continuing reading at A DEEPER FAMILY

you write the days.

Everyone has a story. Each day, a page in a chapter; your life written in words that hold more of the form of action than letters.  We lose sight of one day certain ahead when our lives sealed up by time will no longer be.  It will happen despite all effort given to keep it at an appropriate distance.  Every day the distance closes and we move every bit closer to the end.  But don’t lose value in the finiteness of life when death is remembered.  Much of life and living is discovered in death, the fine reality that one day we will reach the end.  Whether we are prepared or not, every story reaches resolve, or at least the end.

Greater treasure lies in death spied ahead than in life alone.  Trust me. ::::::::

Earlier in the week, we spent the evening running through a fairly normal routine.  The only difference being a camera following and documenting our activity both mundane and extraordinary.  The videographer planned to collect our family story on film for an organization that has become a tremendous shelter in our lives.  That organization is called, GriefWorks.  Hours of film documented our movement and recollected words guiding the story from grief to grace.

He observed through lens our family cooking night.  Tower pizza, one of our apparent specialities, on the menu.  We all pitch in.  At least that’s how the cooking adventure begins, with all of us assigned to jobs preparing food.  Ten minutes in, it’s me in the kitchen lost and guessing measurements.

Even sharing the meal was documented.  Several times throughout, I dreamed of hiring the videographer to film every meal we eat together into the foreseeable future.  I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the girls on that level of behavior.  Maybe the fact that they asked if the filming was sort of like a reality tv show.  At yes, their behavior and advanced conversation morphed into angelic attention and Brady Bunch like coordination.  Amazing...truly.

I loved watching them interact with his questions during their interview together.  They sat on the couch and waited and joked about being tv stars.  I love seeing them smile easily.

Right as the videographer was set to begin, he looked at me once more to make sure I was okay with the questions he prepared for them.  He didn’t know, but we’ve been deep in conversation bathed and drowned in tears.  They’ve shared hurts, questions and fears and given space for grief to exist.  In turn, healing blooms in their hearts like rose buds among thorns.

But still, I appreciated his concern.

:::::::

Easy questions first to prime the pump and set the stage and work out all of the squirming and laughter, mostly.

Then onto heavier words.  They talked about the day Marianne was rushed to the hospital.  It was interesting hearing them talk to someone else.  I just sat out of camera frame, on the side lines, listening and watching how they spoke about easily the most devastating occurrence of their lives.

“Our mom died and we didn’t really know at first.  We waited for her to come home from the hospital and made treats for our whole family.  On one bag we wrote, ‘Mom and Dad.’”

I sometimes forget that for five days while she laid moving between life and not that my girls lived in one world still where all was alright, while I moved into another where my wife disappearing.

The girls shared descriptions of their mom both funny and adoring.  Smiles drew across their faces and mine as each described characteristics found in their lives, her indelible imprint.  I will forever love those characteristics planted deeply within them.

“How is life now with Dad?  Could you describe it?”

And then one of the greatest affirmations of my life ensued.  Their words shifted from past to present and tomorrow.

Fun.  Happy.  Crazy.  ...adventurous.

And there it was ...clouds parting, sun shining, hope rising, day passing from one to another.

“We’re okay, I thought.  Much more than I give credit for.”

:::::::

Adventure was my number one goal in starting life new just me and my girls.  That is what they will remember.  They do now.  Not getting everything right or playing it safe, but moving onward and out boldly.  Treading heavy on the ground soaked in tears stained the color sorrow.  We left one life behind moving swiftly because that day disappeared as all days behind do.  Staying there would mean so would we.

In my heart, adventure was the key unlocking a new door.  I needed courage so I took it.  The man my little daughters came to know in the wake of death and tragedy was a man pulling hard at life and God, cutting deep a path for their feet to walk.  As much as I could, I stretched.  I spent more money investing in experiences together.  We stayed out later, drew new lines, created new traditions and took on new challenges.  Not only did they see me more adventurous in a cavalier way.  They felt me lean into them more in shared fears, broken hearted moments and uncertainty.  But so far, we’ve kept moving.  Together, we jumped two-footed into every challenge.

I had to remake us.  I had to write our days.

:::::::

Undoubtedly, you have been and will only continue to be tossed around by the swelling tide of life and circumstance.  But more lasting than the ugliest moments in your life is the horizon swallowing the sea.  When all settles, and trust me, it will at some point, you will see hope as it burns ahead.

You write the days.  Cling to promise and love and faith through tossing waves both crashing and threatening.  Not one of them is as big and lasting as the God painted horizon ahead.

in the way she should go.

“You must earn the right to quit.” And with those words floating wisely across the room finding only a lonely stare in my daughter’s young eyes, I returned to the corner of the room and the lotus position from which I came.

Another parenting stroke of genius gently leading my daughter from a place of despair and desolation to perspective as the ocean deep and endless sky sprawl.  One day she’ll look back with forever adoration thanking God for gracing her life with such magnificence.

That’s what it looked like seconds after I spoke a Confucian smoke screen hung with ornate words that impressed only me.  It was one of those lines spoken valued so good that repetition was a must for certainty that the hearer surely missed the glory.

She just sat there unaffected by my words, despite repetition and rephrasing, overwhelmed with emotion and armed with countless reasons to quit.  I miss the mark in my parenting relationship with my daughters.  It happens quite often.

I say the wrong things and do the wrong things every day, but I am convinced that perfection in parenting is a misdirected illusion cutting the legs out from under many parents sinking in mistakes.

:::::::

My oldest is growing into her own faster than I can count days.  Before I know it and much sooner than I care to even entertain at the moment, the day will come when she hugs my neck in a hurry on her way out the door to cut her own path in life.

Already behind us are those days when I carried her and ruled righteously in her life with a firm and unquestioned ‘yes’ or ‘no’.  Life was simple.  That was then.

Now and in the days ahead, she is beginning to (and will continue to) push boundaries, question my judgement and reasoning and stretch out the legs strengthening beneath her.  This is an important formative process that must happen, but also must be shaped by the parent.

“Train up a child in the way (s)he should go; even when (s)he is old (s)he will not depart from it.”  - Proverbs 22:6

And hear me clearly when I say that this, her stretching, pushing, objecting, protesting, is all good.

:::::::

Our conversation was more than simply my words being spoken to her, or at her.  A milestone now sets behind us marking her maturing.

You see, training your child to go at life the right way happens in the smallest of opportunities.  This particular opportunity came in the form of a conversation about giving up because of rejection and difficulty.

Elizabeth has been a dancer for over 5 years now.  She’s learned the basics in several different forms of dancing as she’s been a part of two different dance schools.  Dancing is simply a regular part of her identity as a young girl.  As the new session began, Elizabeth chose to enroll in an advanced ballet class, one that would surely push her ability beyond anything that she’s aspired to accomplish as of yet.  After the first class, I could tell she was frustrated and sinking into a bad attitude.  Then her new teacher suggested she move to a more basic ballet class where she could master base techniques.

Suddenly in her own mind, Elizabeth couldn’t dance.  She wouldn’t.

Vanished were the years of dance behind her.  The recitals, the classes and all accomplished, gone lost in her perceived rejection and difficulty.

In the grand scheme of circumstance and reality, her difficulty seems minute and insignificant.  That was my initial evaluation of it, but I undervalued a great struggle for her; a tension between do and don’t, try and quit, win and lose, significance and perseverance.

She made a handwritten list detailing no less than ten reasons why she would quit dance.  With that list written in the little handwriting that I helped teach, she had my attention.

She was shrinking, giving up without giving greater effort in heavier circumstance.

:::::::

“If you quit now, what will you be?”

...silence, but her eyes said everything.

With a hushed voice she nearly whispered, “A quitter.”

:::::::

As a parent, I never want my kids to feel forced to do anything that they do not want to do.  If she really wants to quit dancing and move onto other activities, she’s free to do so, but she has to earn the right to make a mature decision, to quit.

For the sake of her future standing in wait for her, I made her commit to a mature decision.  She would have to commit to three more weeks of her new ballet class, trying hard, giving full effort and having a positive attitude.  Then once she completed three weeks, we would revisit the discussion.

As kids grow, so must parenting techniques and relationship.  The mistake I observe in parenting is to try to parent the same way as kids grow older and face more mature situations.

We prayed simple words and committed to simple action.  Packed into the cryptic statement that I began our conversation with bathed in her tears, was truth far simpler and greater than I originally intended.  She understood that she couldn’t just quit because a habit would be given room to grow and that life required perseverance through difficulty.

I’m convinced that a good portion of any parenting success with me is due to a sort of subconsciously driven dumb luck pulling wisdom and experience from my past into their present.

After I picked her up from her new class, she smiled almost slyly like she learned a new secret, and told me that she loves her new ballet class.

Gone were the worries that convinced her she should quit.