joie de vivre, a thanksgiving.

a smile connected to the sun known by shuffled steps and a beaded brow all waited for all breath held for all hope hesitated for fulfillment, rest oh, and sleep the Sun faithful truer than truth known

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It’s been awhile since I’ve smiled without effort and rested in the day here without waiting for another.  That’s the day I know now, full of hope and the knowledge that no matter the circumstance, hope perseveres, founded in the faithfulness of a God who knows no stopping or uncaring.  Other days will crash ashore with uncertainty and challenge, but the faithful learn that trust is best perfected in unnavigable waters.

Ten days into marriage and my heart couldn’t be more thankful - thankful that God gave me the tenacity to not let go in the pursuit of hope and happiness and the strength to cross from one life to another.  And joy overflows.  Marissa emanates a blinding beauty all of her own accord, but will forever echo hope in a way my heart hears especially because of God in the binding of us.  In today and into tomorrow, we will walk hand-in-hand, through thick and thin, matching love and smiles in each wave that crashes upon us all because of Something much bigger than us, bigger than death and life.

And so, this is a simple thank you, a public testament honoring God for never letting me become lost within myself or too afraid of each crashing day into me following my first wife’s death some three years ago.

You must allow yourself to be found, throw open the blinds and welcome in thankfulness, and then you will be there found and free.  Unprejudiced thankfulness is the fruit that hangs on the branches grafted into God by grace.  For then, nothing can thieve the joy of living.

We all have much to shout thanksgiving for.  Raise your glass, friend, in the thickest and thin.

me, set an enemy of my daughter's heart

Often lately, we’ve found ourselves there stuck between emotion and disappointment.  Tears threatened to fall from her reddening, yet stubborn eyes as she stood before me while doing her best not to look directly at me.  I leaned over her lording big controlling words meant to strip down her actions to unthoughtful disobedience aimed to hurt and defy.

There we stood, worlds apart screaming at the moon wanting love without give trouncing on delicate soil uninvited yet demanding so long to lullabies equaling love I know she loves me.  She knows I love her, but there are times lately when I feel absolutely lost parenting Elizabeth, my oldest.  The fact that she’s only approaching her teen years intimidates me, especially when others are quick to respond that I should brace myself for when she is a teenager.  And the waves won’t quit as my younger daughters race to break on those teen shores, too.  As we near then, the joke of owning an escape cabin visited monthly sways further from comedy and closer to reality.  Until I own a cabin, patience must be cultivated in my thorny heart.

“There will be times when you won’t like me very much, and I need you to understand that I’m okay with that.”

Patience hangs from a branch rooted in love and there my heart finds clarity and returns to Christ-led parenting.

In times overrun by emotion and disappointment in my shortcomings as a parent and her defiance as a child, I grow impatient and irate and steal moments from guiding love sharp enough to cut through the most mired emotional tangles.  Simply put, I am my own worst enemy as a parent when my love is based more on my kids liking me than me loving them.  And by loving them, I mean caring enough to wage steady war against their little hearts set selfishly inward, evidenced by possessive pronouns littering their speak.  The real challenge is in separating from my own selfish heart enough to let the love of Christ guide me as a parent rather than my heart mercenarily demanding obedience for love.

Love doesn’t demand; obedience blooms in a heart loved so well.

Like a veteran gardener plucking weeds from good soil, I vigilantly remind myself to hold higher value to where we’re going instead of how we’re getting there.  And this is important to remember, for it’s easy to get lost in wanting to be loved back by your children.  If I will love her defiant heart well, I must set myself as an enemy to her heart.

Practically speaking, her tears shouldn’t shape the way I love her, neither should her accusations of me not understanding her and not caring about how she feels.  My role is to lead her through fierce times where Love will be saving grace.  Lots of parenting can be left to positioning - how I position my heart, will determine how I’m able to reach through innate selfishness that plagues their little hearts as it plagues and preys on all human hearts.  My goal is to set them free, free to love truthfully.

In short, parenting is the most difficult thing an adult will ever aspire to do.

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]

parenting is the simplest thing ever :: A Deeper Family post

The blades just kept spinning like life and order and nothingness.  Everything made sense in its whispered hum.  I just faded in the noise, into time unaccountable and in the realization that my hands do less these days while my mind just spins in circles –much like the humming fan blades turning intoxicatingly.

I do far less these days, but I’m busier.  And tired(er).

On an average of five hours sleep, I go until I cannot or should not.

Just a handful of months ago, I finished my first book to much joy and self-adulation.  The amount of focus needed to see an idea through to storyboard, gruelingly sliced and shaped into an outline and then strung tighter together with words, pushed limits broader than I knew possible.  I met the day earlier than dawn and the kids to work with diligence closer to the end.  Words filled blank pages deep into night after the kids went to bed, all the while, working and learning to be a single parent between the margins of writing.  As I look back at pictures of daddy daughter dates, first experiences as a single parent and too many dessert overloaded movie nights to count, I see me smiling easier.

Those days didn’t escape.  We leaned into each moment honestly and didn’t even know it.  We didn’t need to.  The moment was enough and it was all we wanted – nothing more.

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Continue to full article at Deeper Family

the next 48 days.

To say part of me is not a little afraid is to whisper loudly in the hush of sacred grace.

To say all of me is not overjoyed is to withhold praise.

My heart holds quiet all dreams and hopes and smiles reserved for tomorrow, for that day has yet to mature, and still it will.  The future always houses the hope we struggle to see.  We writhe and struggle to be okay, well fit in the burning of today.  Our eyes condition to the dimness of today seeing mostly behind, less of now and even less of all ahead.

I woke earlier than the sun shivering cold in single digit temperatures. Overnight the fire had died down to a pile of glowing ash and the small heater built into the cabin wall had reached a limit. In the dark, I finally crawled off of the sofa and stumbled close to the stone fireplace to thaw. Nine degrees read the thermometer. I remember thinking the morning appropriate and just right, the cabin cold and lonely. Realizing the smoldering heap of ash and coal would provide no comfort, I laced up my boots, added another jacket and double checked my pack for paper and pen. Within minutes the forest surrounded me. Each frigid step forward gave cause for worry.

What if I don’t find Him? What if the moment I’ve been seeking is silent and all calms to being unfair still?

I had come to lose all that was already lost. My mind kept bringing me back to why she died, more particularly, why would He let her. Like a child going sick on a spinning merry go round, each day soured my stomach even more. Death overshadowed life, cooled the warmth of love in my heart and smeared goodness with the ashes of life lost. I found the cabin in hopes God would find me. I didn’t feel found waking that cold morning only the lingering sting of death and anxiety of silence.

So much of my life has been redefined these past three years. I’ve lied, hidden my heart, retreated from friends and kept telling myself God is good, all while a heart war between grace and justice, with tomorrow its price, waged on. Anger flashed in moments worn too thin to be okay. Beneath the surface of my heart made up to look healthy, grief boiled and hissed monologues twisted in truth and pain. Deadlier than my wife dying was the dying of my own heart.

Back in the forest nearly lost that frozen morning I medicated my heart with distance. I sewed my wounds together with words and ideas that sounded heroic and safe but didn’t take faith. Those sutures insulated my heart from the reach of hurt as best as possible. On my shoulders I would carry my daughters away from death into a brighter day. I didn’t need love to be happy then, but my parched heart craved it. Careless words jabbed at God like an ant at the universe while He mostly stayed quiet and close.

In each subsequent sinking day, I learned to swim in the current of God’s unquitting grace. Never have I lived a day when all has been lost. That’s the brightness His love conditioned my eyes staring back into the void to see; a grace strong enough to swallow it all, the good and bad.

He knew then, three years ago at the mountaintop, what I know now.

Grace finds us shivering in the cold of life faded and lifts us higher than the tallest mountain.  Three years removed from losing myself in the cold shadows of the Ozarks, I live a life undeserving of the feeble strength my quick retreating heart holds.  My heart had to die completely in order to belong to any other day than the lost one behind me.

And here I stand, friends, removed and stronger, hand in hand with an amazingly resilient woman whose compassion inspires me and truth challenges me.  Just 48 days from marriage, my heart couldn't be happier.  Marissa and I come from different lives whose paths have curled and bent around roadblocks but managed to merge, spurred by grace's determined touch.  Years from now we may find ourselves thinned by life and struggling to hold on, but grace will not let go.  it is with God that I go and full confidence that I rejoice both in now and every day ahead of us.

I could dream of no one better that I'd rather win and lose in life with, love and laugh with and pursue God's dreams with that this woman who loves me so well.  I'm reveling in each of the next 48 days, a new start arched and framed in beauty and grace.