capturing tomorrow in the little of today.

There’s a running visual in my mind.  A thread of life existing out there ambiguously floating, spied but not yet owned.  It calls out to me where I am in today busy with little details and deadlines, distracted by all that must be done.  And all must be done or the days bleed.

A day where the ground evens, the grade not quite as steep and the dirt not so loose and shifty; a day when accomplishment stays close to me and I have nothing left to prove to myself or God, in my mind.  In that day, I am an author who writes easily about the dark, recounting scars and stories, waxing lyrically of the damnedest of days and grace lifting me near weightlessly.  I will have reached a peak of accomplishment.  A book will have been written, more books following the first, my family will be stronger and even more grounded in purpose and path, and all will beat with the rhythm of a day better than behind when grace was only a crutch and a cradle.

Those days glow ahead invitingly. ...oh, the glory those days ahead hold.

Getting here to there is a journey of making my way home to a place where I belong.  Purpose, passion and meaning, all belong to that day, the one starring in the running visual in my mind.

It’s a day I must belong to, be in and reach for.  That day when all comes together rightly and a smile hangs honestly displacing this tired look.

But now ... in this day ...

I get lost easily in the day to day, little steps leading to the broad expanse glowing on the horizon.  I trust what’s ahead is good, but I don’t act accordingly.  Distracted by insecurities, intimidated by fears, my eyes lock to just the dirt around my feet and all promise ahead shrinks miles away.  And if I’m honest all I want to do is quit.  Everything.

Almost two years ago, I set out to write a book, my first.

Manuscripts don’t write themselves and authors don’t just appear out of thin air.  It takes work, lots of work.  And like any reaching dream larger than the day current, determination is a necessary pace to be adopted if that day is to be pulled out of the sky and your dream is to live in real life.

That book, my nearly two year old effort, is being written.  And that’s the whole of it completely.

This week marks my measured sprint to the finish.  While I shelved working on my manuscript for 7 months, now it’s time to fully finish.  It’s just not enough to dream big, pull hard, progress to a little acclaim, yet abandon all effort because of fear or doubt or weariness.

The visual still runs through my mind and the day still waits for my coming.

:::::::

All dreaming is a calling.

Undoubtedly, you feel the draw of dreams specific to your days lying in wait for you.  It is never too late to be who you should be, to pick up where you left off, to brush the dirt off of the leading path buried in abandoned surrender.

Tomorrow awaits.  It’s path is found in the little of today.

:::::::

Determination feeds can do thinking and effort leading to accomplishment.  With anything bigger than now, any reach at more or tomorrow, determination is fundamental to success ultimately.  In the end, bridging the gap between dreaming today and living in dreams tomorrow is quite simple.  It is the guy who simply won’t give up, who wins little by little in each determined step today, that captures tomorrow.

Here are little steps I’ve held taken to be determined in finishing:

• define what I’m going after :: identify a focused finish and work everyday to close in;

• organize, schedule :: my work must have a pace and rhythm or resistance wins out and I don’t do what I want to do;

• reassess/evaluate progress :: celebrate another chapter complete, look back at progress and ahead to ensure my direction is on course and on time

• prayerfully do the work :: invite God right into the vulnerability and all moments I want to quit

In the end, writing the book is small compared to what the dream is doing inside of me.  It’s the pursuit, the journey, that prepares me to belong and exist within the dreams of tomorrow ...the determination forged in the little of today.

promise and prophesy and home.

They. Then. Silence.

The wind slows to a still. The sun filling empty sky burning hot.

Hope is a commodity fleeting, an idea captured weakly in history, stories told of a day gloriously new. And they groan. And they gaze. Lost in a wasteland of mistakes of fathers and kings and proud men always reaching for more they wait for what is wanted: a way out. But they rush to desire gorging hearts filling with empty now.

What is to come, a ghost of tomorrow floating free and away.

Salvation whispered on the lips of crazed prophets and sealed in songs of priests and kings. A plan more expansive than sweat effort, theirs and ours, to swallow more than only they who give half hearts and clinched hands alluding the pious in humble ever after.

Immanuel. With us.

:::::::

It is of tremendous importance to think of the Bible as an unfolding narrative, not merely a book of history, stories, myth or stand alone promises.  When we reduce scripture to segments of favorite verses or easier to be accepted parts, we miss the grandness of the meta-narrative illustrating God’s bold, broad redemptive strokes.  That narrative beginning at creation and turning sharply at man’s heart to own itself reaches peak in quiet fulfillment of promise and prophesy.

Wise men came and angels sang, but the ones arrived for had closed eyes and lost hearts much like us often do now.

So they feared the Lord but also served their own gods, after the manner of the nations from among whom they had been carried away.

So these nations feared the Lord and also served their carved images. Their children did likewise, and their children's children—as their fathers did, so they do to this day. (2 Kings 17:33, 41)

These were a people wondering to find home, off and on again slaves displaced by their own hearts and self stretched out desires.  Infidelity bred and cared for within them ignoring the instruction to worship only One.  God alone would give them a home established and be a home for them that dwelt in his shadow (Psalm 91).  For reasons no different than are our choosing, money, sex, power, possession, fear, most chose a dwelling apart and away from God’s promise.  In doing so, the promise was missed.

A child of God and man sent to change the hearts of fathers realigning the hearts of children and children’s children to return to home.

:::::::

As we enter into the season of Advent my challenge is to realign myself and the hearts of my children to such a humble invitation lost within the shuffle of our holiday busy and hearts holding to security in temporal strength.  And so we talk in terms of coming home by keeping the message of salvation come to us close to our hearts and we sacrifice in little ways to give actual place to grow in our hearts not only in our words.

This year we talked about giving to others so as to participate in Advent; the arrival of hope for those in need.  Each of the girls marked off two gifts from their list and found the price of what they crossed off.  With that money, gifts were chosen for girls rescued from sex slavery; a care package prepared including basic necessities for these girls to enter life normal and free.  A teddy bear was included in the package these girls’ would receive.  My girls were sold.

I’ve learned that parenting in small ways leads to big hearts ready for so much more and grounded in home.

:::::::

We all long for home: to belong, to rest, to be secure and at ease.

This season, determine to return to center, to the reason, to simple salvation in innocent, wonderful child messiah.  Savior.  Immanuel, with us.  Amongst our groaning, wondering, pushing for meaning and validation and importance in life God in the details moving about.  We miss him, I often do, in my strain to acquire salvation on my own.

Home does not exist from within me or my effort.  It was foretold to a people blinded by effort and right who did not recognize it.  Home has arrived as promised in Kingdom come salvation and redemptive belonging changing the heart of this child and my children and theirs one day soon.  This gives great cause for celebration continually.

Glory be to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

DEEPER FAMILY :: the peculiarity of gratitude.

“Rejoice in the Lord always.  I will say it again: Rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4)

Peculiar words, I’d say.

Always?

What of days prickly and unending, too sharp to stand without bleeding and too long to see end?  No break or respite.  Only the breaking of will, the loss of hope and ability to be okay.  Those days, rejoice?

Yes, in days cursed, in moments heavy, in the breaking of security and even in the violation of things most beautiful and sacred in life ...rejoice, friends!

When life pulls and tears, rejoice.  In the thick and thin, rejoice.  In danger and disturbance, in expected and unexpected, in the collapse of life and the ruin of happy, rejoice.  Find full reason, drive your stakes deep into the soil and hold on with a tenacious desperation ...and rejoice.

Continuing reading at Deeper Family

parent as prophet.

The architect must be a prophet... a prophet in the true sense of the term... if he can't see at least ten years ahead don't call him an architect.Frank Lloyd Wright

The same must be true in parenting also.  Architect, one who shapes and builds.  Prophet, one who sees the form before the build.

With the complexities of culture changing and evolving, media shaping perspectives and acceptabilities and a world moving much too fast, it is more than easy to get lost in parenting techniques.  It seems as though many strategies given to assist and guide good parenting are geared more to contain the child in good behavior rather than preparing to unleash them into the life waiting for them.

And more so everyday, I am convinced that it is the latter parental ambition that should be reached for.

An architect must have a plan to raise a structure from a brick to a building.  It is no more luck than it is chance.

Buildings are not just built.  They are constructed by design and with intentional, planned effort.  Careful attention is given to measurements and incremental values that may seem insignificant to those simply observing the structure being built, but the architect marries himself to the details for he knows that the future, the success and the strength of what he is building lies in the attentive detail to the parts forming the whole to be.  It is not so much the exterior that the architect is concerned with.  He is painstakingly obsessed with the structure from the inside out.  Even when the eventual outside will boast of innovative design and personal genius, the inside must be correct, inch by inch and detail by detail.

Much like parenting in techniques, I’m sure it is quite easy for an architect to reduce his genius to a builder of buildings rather than one who sees the form before the build and raises a structure to life.

The architect must be a prophet who sees not only a finished product but a form finding purpose and significance now while belonging still to the future ahead.

Is this not parenting also?

The parent must be a prophet... who builds now based on what he has glimpsed ahead, carefully building, constructing and reinforcing, the child for the life ahead of them.

...a prophet in the truest sense of the term ...if he can’t see at least ten years ahead don’t call him a parent.

For me, and I assume the same for you as a parent, if I am merely conditioning my daughters to react to ‘yes’ and ‘no’ and right and wrong - giving attention to formless details rooted in immediate response and good behavior - what confident hope do I have that my daughters will one day become all that they can be?

I am trying to rid myself of attitudes aiming at quick, get in line, kind of behavior and reaching to be the parent unleashing them, exposing them and preparing them for the life ahead.  I want them to live with a deep, intrinsic sense of purpose in life, hearts burning with passion and form strong enough to stand.

I don’t have the answers.  

I’m often more confounded by the trivial than confident as a parent, often more lost stumbling insecurely than always strongly leading them, 
often saying things I don’t necessarily mean in emotion and anger than speaking love and truth often worried that it all won’t be enough than faithfully putting seeds in the soil of their heart often ill concerned with the exterior, what others might think, than diligently tightening bolts within their loose little hearts

...so I pray for prophet eyes to see ahead, the possibility of all they can become, and I glimpse the form of God’s hand lifting dust into life.

It is there that I try to parent from the most.  I speak to them as if they have an already accepted day ahead that they belong to, not in terms of a career choice for them, but in a life where they live now leading them to the who, what, when, where, why and how of it all.  As a parent with prophet eyes, I share with them the significant glimpse and together we spy God together and the reason holding within them reveals clearly.

The vision holding in my heart for each of my girls is a day when I will let them go from my hand into another day.

We will look into each others eyes, they will not wilt, as she says goodbye to only my daughter and embraces the woman she has been becoming.

That day will be familiar as I will have visited it often by then, crossing the line of present to future, creating and shaping them from there.

*an innovative design of Frank Lloyd Wright calling from years ahead of its build

grace and the girl.

Her tears always kill me. Emily’s a very happy kid who strides light through each day and whose heart presses soft into the relationships and interactions connected to her.  She is easy to get along with and has little problem building friendships quickly, yet meaningfully.  She loves the people in her life and the exact moment she finds herself in.

That’s what she lives for. The moment she’s in with the people in it with her.  Her little heart holds a good tension of bold and honest meekness, daring and strong but tender soft.

I love how she loses herself in moments, fully engaged in and bought in, not yet thinking about the next.

Consequence is never as worthy as immediate context.

This both works for and against her, but lost in the moment, she thinks nothing of the consequence of her action.

Emily is adventurer pushing hard on boundaries and most alive at the edge.

In a way our hearts, hers and mine, meet closest along lines of adventure and discovery.  I see her heart clearly as it resembles much of mine as a child so there’s a familiarity when I speak to her heart in correction and instruction, nurturing her growing stature.

:::::::

As she walked back toward me and the spot I stood, the spot where I sent her off from, the spot where I stooped down strongly to look her eye to eye as to peer serious and straight into her, I could see her already breaking.  With each step closer to me she tightened inwardly.  I could tell she was sinking in her wrong and more so in the realization of what she’d done; the hurt she caused now clearly perceived after the fact.

Only moments before, my oldest, Elizabeth, burst through the door out of breath and more frenzied than a result of mere play.

“DAD!  Emily is throwing acorns at me and my friends!!  She hit one of my friends in the face!!!”

Instantly, I could visualize Emily, red-faced, glazed-eyed and all smiles, lost in a moment lacking any trace of pre-thought or consequence.  And instantly, I was on my feet, running through the door to assess the damage done.

The sidewalk in front of our house was empty. Acorns strewn out everywhere like some squirrel’s haven gone awry.

Elizabeth’s friends sat together at the park across the street.  Emily emerged from our backyard in clear retreat and realization following the acorn incident.  After the moment, when she realizes consequence, her eyes widen as if to hold the tears filling them and she sinks quickly in guilt and regret.

I know she privately judges herself harshly.  I used to do the same.

::::::: Grace.  The thing about grace that confounds us is that it’s unearnable.  We do nothing to get it.  We sin.  We apologize and repent.  He doles out grace extravagantly like an unlimited supply.

Grace kills good and fills us with right.

Being a good person leaves the door open to so many mistakes and pitfalls not owned by responsibility.  Being a right person sets us above good to a place where we act responsibly when we both do good and bad, when we do right and wrong.

Grace teaches us responsibility and how to flourish most in mistakes.

:::::::

I called Emily to me and stooped down on one knee to where our eyes could meet levelly.

“Emily, did you throw acorns at those girls?”

Her eyes answered as they lowered to the ground and filled with regret.

“Emily, what you did was wrong.  You could have seriously injured those girls.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“I know.  But what you did was still serious and wrong.”

I didn’t say much else, but sent her to make things right.  I watched her walk toward the group of girls all older than her.  They stopped talking as she met them and looked at her as she stood there.  I’m not sure that Emily said anything else but “I’m sorry” to the group of girls, but it was enough.  And then she walked back to the spot I was still standing and waiting.

She wanted to hide both embarrassed and guilty.  I didn’t let her.  She had to feel it, the beauty of grace letting you go.

“Emily, being a good person is not about just always being good; its about what you do when you make a mistake.  You make it right and then you move on.”

She looked at me in the eyes and smiled softly.  I smiled back thankful that grace found my little girl bound in her mistake and let her go.

in loving memoriam.

“...Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

In the backing away from her as she drew her last few breaths there on the hospital bed and in the whispering of those words, her favorite Psalm, in her ear, I realized just how formative she’d been in my life all these years.  Roots tended to.

Those words, surely, a memoriam of her life lived well; a nurtured hope alive and well in my days stretching on.  Forever echoing back to me.  A path walked well laid as a map, a reference to end. My grandmother affectionately always known as, Maw Maw Lucy, lived the 92 years given to her, the good with the bad, the forsaken and hoped to be forgotten days as holy in her simple continuance, her steady countenance, rooted in a faith disciplined in prayers and humble trust.  She just took the darker and the damned with a such a delicate movement in a heavenly sentiment.

“We can always pray and ask God for help,” I’d hear her say easily.

:::::::

Just yesterday, I was asked to give her eulogy.  In searching through thoughts, I looked back over years and saw the most beautiful landscape diligently cared for, a steady attended to life.

Her words and sayings echoed.  Her actions revisited me.

Simple.  Echoing behind and ahead.

:::::::

Here’s some of what I shared.

If you sat for any length of time with Maw Maw Lucy, you’d know her fully well.  You’d notice her to be a lady of manners, faith, conversation and family.  Even my friends she’d only met once, maybe twice, would affectionately call her, Maw Maw Lucy.  She had a charming unassuming way about her that would comfortably draw you in and make you feel at home no matter the circumstance of life.

She shared secrets and kept secrets with her grandchildren, told those secrets and stories to her great grandchildren, knew her neighbors better than some know their own family, loved her children deeply and immovably and held tightly to a simple strong faith where in the end everything would work out just as it should.

I remember two distinct moments of Maw Maw Lucy that I’d like to share.

When I was young boy, my grandparents owned an Oldsmobile.  My Paw Paw drove careful and slow, mostly too slow for me and my sister’s liking.  We’d beg him to drive faster but he always stayed serious and steady at the wheel.  I remember one time in particular, Maw Maw Lucy was driving the Oldsmobile with just me and my sister in the car.  Of course, we both begged her to drive faster.  My sister implored her, “Maw Maw, drive fast like Daisy Duke on the Dukes of Hazard!!”  And to our amazement, she did. With a playful but fully serious tone she glanced back and told us, "hold on".  For the first time we felt that Oldsmobile speed faster than normal as we approached railroad tracks.

Remember how long cars were in those days...?  It felt liked we floated for miles.

She always took careful attention to involve herself into our context, to find way into our hearts.  Tending roots.

Another lasting moment is right after a particularly difficult time in my own little daughters’ lives.  They were devastated when my wife died.  Just right here in this same funeral home room, Maw Maw Lucy quietly sat with them as they leaned into her.  They cried, and I remember hearing her whisper to them that everything would be okay.  And they believed her.  Surely.  Forever.

She had a way of inspiring you to believe simply for good things in life no matter how difficult life sometimes seemed.

The goodness of life now and the hope of All ahead of us.  She believed in God, Jesus and Heaven, and trusted that in the end He was enough.

How do you measure 92 years in just a few minutes? Look around this room at my wonderful family and all of you she lovingly called friends.  There are hints of Maw Maw Lucy in each of our eyes.  Stories of her in our lives remain in each of our hearts.

:::::::

What my grandmother left behind is a legacy that leads me still in her absence.  An easy trust continuing even in trembling times.

How grateful I am for my daughters to have really known her firsthand, their great grandmother!

Her life, legacy and passing sharpen my focus for family even more.  I can only hope now to leave something similar behind in my going.

{in memoriam // 07.06.20 - 10.28.12}

little formative things.

“Emily, go put away the clothes in your room.” And with a newfound tonal resonance in my words and voice, she simply went.  No protest.  All activity was paused and with the obedience of a disciplined monk child she followed my instruction and literally put away the clothes lying all over her bedroom floor.

I must admit, I sat on the couch baffled and a little set back.  Once back downstairs, she announced confidently and rather matter-of-factly that all was tidy and her room had been cleaned ...just as I told her to.  Usually she protests or tells me that all is picked up and cleaned in her room when I ask.  This time was different.  I didn’t ask if her room was clean.  I just gave instruction and she did.

Wow ...in a way that effort eclipses expectation.  I breathed in deeply the air of success and accomplishment and sank warmly into thoughts of the amazing young woman she would become and the considered triumphant parent I would be.

Then I was yanked back to now and normal as she got into a fight with her younger sister, said several jabbing things to her and simply walked away leaving her little sister in tears.

Another wow.  This time expectation crushed effort and I was again the hobbling parent reaching blindly into the dark hoping to find the right way.

It spins me dizzy how fast the tempo and pace can change under our roof and within our hearts.

:::::::

If I had to bet a million dollars that you and I were the same parents, similar in struggles,  I’d bet confidently.  We all face disciplinary struggles with our kids and deal with insecurity in parenting at least in thinner times when what we say and what they do race away from each other.

My kids are good kids, but it’s constant work, reshaping, repositioning, picking up falling pieces and reinforcing over and over again.  A parent’s work is never quite done.

How the work is done matters exponentially.

I have a tendency to swing for the fences, to be the best parent in the best times and run the bases in victory.  I want to be the best parent to my girls and sometimes my desire to be the best parent gets in the way of being an effective parent.

A parent aiming for best aims at response as validation.  If the kid listens well, the parent succeeds, their ability winning the kid and showing the way. A parent aiming for effective aims at learning as validation.  If the kid learns well, the parent is effectively teaching the kid to learn and think, guiding maturation.

Obviously, there’s room for semantic confusion and muddying of the waters, but for me, being the best parent is a misdirected aim focused on my kids’ behavior and response versus what they are actually learning.  The why of things and how they respond to life situations is of greater importance both now and into their future.  When they’re older facing decisions needed to be made, they’re ability to base off of what they’ve learned will support them much better than merely following instruction.

I learned this lesson bewildered by Emily’s quick response to my instruction.

Each time I told her what to do, she did it.  She could follow my instruction, no problem.  But if I asked her if her room was clean and to clean it if it needed to be, her room would be a mess and remain a mess until I told her to clean it.

And so we talked about what a lie was and that by giving me idea that her room was clean when it wasn’t, she was then lying to me.  That broke her little heart, but in a great way.  The effectiveness of parenting in this situation was that Emily learned how to not only respond, but to think critically and be more honest.

It is the little formative things in parenting that transcends best and helps us to be lastingly effective.  And those little formative things must be done over and over again.

A parent’s work is never done. "Direct your children onto the right path, and when they are older, they will not leave it." (Prov 22:6)

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