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.

[gallery link="file" columns="5"]

"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.

fighting gravity.

[gallery link="file" columns="5"] Our words, breath within us, hang heavy holding all reality the day can contain.  We speak.  It is so and it will be.  It being reality, our activity and transitioning possibility.  All hinged upon our words spoken and planted in our lives.  Fruit of our words sprouting from heart.  Make no small mistake, we are not Creator.  We are architects reading the plans and blue prints, the details of how to put together pieces trusting the plan and scheme makes sense.

Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits. (Proverbs 18:21, ESV)

Our lives agree with our speech, the very words spoken from our heart both out loud and public and whispering within.  We agree.  We confess and so we become.  The authority of our words shapes life.  Once believing unreservedly, wildly and free, our dreams and expectations soared to no ceiling.  The vocabulary of heroes not tied down this small over-earthed life.  As child, we could fly.  Now adult, it is easier to walk.  And so do our dreams and speech.  Life does give way to responsibility in the time between child and adult, but the words do not need changing.  They must not.  Or they must be found and rediscovered.

As a parent, I am building the infrastructure within the hearts of my daughters.  So crucial are the words I try to protect and plant.  They are fighting gravity.  We all are, really.  Speak responsively reacting to what we see or release words that we know to be true.  That is the fight against gravity.  We bruise and spill and break forgetting words that stretch us out beyond the surface of life small and calculable.  Our words shrink and so does our heart.  And so does our day.

Emily is an artist.  She’s seven years old now and always has been from the first moment a crayon lifted within her hand creating out of her heart on paper.  It is beautiful.  Her hands move freely to the size of her heart and words.  When I ask if she can draw a particular thing a simple reply reveals it.  “Sure.”  Emily will be an artist as long as she wants to be.  When lines created by her hand look crooked and imperfect and when she no longer thinks so, gravity will be pulling heavy.  Whether or not Emily continues to be an artist is not what I’m fighting for.  The choice of her words and the fact that she believes them for anything in her life both now and forever is.

We are all artists once believing hidden beneath the rubble of life piled high.  We forget when we bruise dismissing words dripping life only as stuff of children and toys.  Let our words hold life that rightly defy the gravity of smaller.

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.

help make a movie::the father effect

John is a giant of a friend of mine.  He is living a dream, making a movie, chasing God-given purpose and needs YOUR help.  Watch the film trailer below and allow yourself the room to get caught up in his story.  It will change people, possibly even a whole generation and a culture.  That's his aim.  He needs you.  You need this movie to be made. Me and the girls lined up in support.  We're committing at least $500.

@johnpfinch || theperfectfather.org || Kickstarter - The Father Effect

What should you do?

1. Go to the Kickstarter page
2. GIVE
3. Tell your friends and followers ...and help make a movie.