down the trail.

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Words, emotions, actions, all lit by the heat of the moment.  Right there.  Right in front of us both.  Regrets pile high once dust settles and calm returns.

Losing sight of who they can be and how to get there with them easily falls victim to all busy schedules, sticky details and chunky events of life unfolding. She lied again.  Again.  

Didn’t she learn from the last time I punished her and raised my voice emphatically?  Apparently, what I say does not matter enough to direct her to making the right choices.

What else would be the cause? She doesn’t respect me anymore.

Standing there looking back at me lying again.  In her eyes rest a distance.  I’m not getting through to her.  Control her every more and response.

“Stand up straight when I am talking to you!”  “Don’t you walk away from me!”  “Sit still, right there.”

In the immediate, I am blinded.  Nothing behind or ahead hold value, only now right there in the heat of the moment.  And there I lose touch with her.  That is the reason a distance rests in her eyes standing there looking back at me.  We stand apart in two different locations, a gap ever widening.

As a single dad and only parent to my three little daughters, I have become much more insecure.  With all of my heart, I only want them to grow healthy and robustly from little girls to young ladies secure in who they are and into loving and wise mature women set on a purposeful course in life.  The fear of not getting them there tangles and trips me.  The fear is now.  It is all I see.  And that is precisely the problem.  I react quickly and out of context losing sight of my ultimate desire.  In quick reactionary parenting, I am just being bounced between little details isolated and void of the overall beauty and full potential holding instead of seeing those little details as not isolated but parts of the whole and opportunities to get her there.

A few months ago while racing down a single track path through a wide open prairie on my mountain bike, I severely misjudged a turn.  Over the handle bars and through the air I tumbled landing squarely on my head and sliding through the dirt and dry grass on my back.  In the adrenaline rush, I popped right back up to my feet.  Everything blurry and spinning.  My stomach tightened and knees weakened as I reached for the ground both signs of a concussion.  After a couple minutes, I climbed back on my bike, cracked helmet and bleeding, for three more miles to finish the course.  The wreck and the injuries incurred were my doing.  One of the most dangerous things to do while mountain biking is to look down right over your handle bars.  In doing so, you miss what is right ahead.  The path is only right there, but there is so much ahead.  And you need to see the whole path ahead to anticipate response.  Turns, logs laying in path, roots, creeks, switch backs, hills and more all ahead on the course.

The danger of looking only right at the moment is to get lost in the immediacy of details unfolding and forget all ahead.  Life holds only immediate value.  Preoccupied and controlled by the moment only, you are left to only reacting.  Life is about much more than flinching, wincing and reacting.  So is parenting.

When I stare into the moment and lose sight of who she can be and will be, all ahead fades into the distant forever.  Both of us sink into a moment rushing, emotions running high and now bleeds like forever.  In this way exactly, parenting shares a parallel with mountain biking.  Life intersecting life.  Truth pedaling and parenting.  In both, eyes must lift out of moments heated and sticky and stay fixed ahead.

I am learning to securely parent my three little daughters in looking down the trail, anticipating response and proactively participating rather than waiting to react in moments and details.

God in context.

I went away alone for a four day writing weekend to make progress on finishing my book, the first one that I’m writing.  60,000 words or so all dripping with life, mine.  A view fixed from my eyes at life all around and life all within.  Memories resurface bringing great comfort and pain and irreplaceable joy and sadness still.  These words piece together only fragments of my life still unfolding like tiny picture scenes positioned carefully to make a bigger picture standing at a distance.  And what you begin to notice more than anything else is God.  In everything.

My brother died at age eight.  Me being five, I didn’t really get it.  God.  Finding God through fear in high school.  My hero dad leaving my mom in the slowest, clumsiest way, God.  Off to college lost and drifting, God.  Meeting the one who would become the one and the joy and finding involved, God.  Defying my odds and yet somehow landing where I always thought I would in ministry as a pastor.  God.  Family.  God.  The birth and acceptance of the three greatest treasures in my life.  God.  Learning to be a father.  God.  Leaving all to pursue the thinnest of dreams together as a family.  God.  The death of my wife.  God.  Life collapsing.  God.  Holding my daughters breaking in the dust settling.  God.  Awakening to a new day.  God.  Finding new life.  God.  Writing.  God.  Epilogue to Prologue, ending to (re)beginning, in the most precise redemptive strokes and causing all to meaningfully making sense.  God.

Below is an excerpt from a chapter that I am writing.  It is not finished.  Maybe it never truly will be.  As of now, the chapter is tentatively entitled, “A Crumbling Wall”.  In writing this chapter, I have a specific vision and imagery guiding the words and their piece together.  A wall battered down, eroded by life and circumstance, especially loss and grief, and how these served to rebuild and reform faith and trust stronger and more solid than before.

There was a street performer that I would see most times I visited the French Quarter as a kid.  For some reason, he made me think about God.  He was a mime in the character of a robot.  His movements were odd, mechanical, precise and a bit predictable.  Even in the sweltering heat and heavy summer air, he dressed in a full suit painted silver from head to toe.  As both natives and tourists passed him by, he never broke character.  It may have been his commitment to character or his quirky, precise gestures that caused me to think of God.  Then again, it could have been his silence and distance from people moving closely all about him and the way in which his actions and movements were cause for attention, but not direct interaction.  And of course, maybe it was the brilliance of his silver skin, suit and hat, that glowed and stood out in the unbelievable heat and humidity of the New Orleans day and how it never affected him that reminded me of God and what I perceived him to be.

Many people are enchanted by God and the thought that He is out there somewhere, somehow holding it all together and keeping the world from tilting too far out of control.  Comfortable with the distance yet calling to somewhere in the sky when in need.  Some are disillusioned by him and his perceived and felt inactivity in broken and horrific parts of their lives.  God exists exactly within the context of your life.  It is in the awakening to God as you are, just where you are, that you find him.  Or more precisely put, God finds you.

The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own,t and his own peoplet did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.  (John 1:9-13)

I pushed her into the water.

Clean. Pure. Sacred.Water, a symbol of new.

Our hearts, no matter how young, dirty with old bearing the weight of choices as old as humanity.  Sweat dripping from brow returning to the dust from which it once came living under a heaviness blurred into the background of life.  No matter how hard we try, how much we drink or the great lengths we go, it is never enough.  An unquenchable something.  We work for satisfaction believing it to be found in what we can get for ourselves.  It’s crafty in deflecting.  Sin. It chooses us before we reach for it and know of it.  It yearns in the wailing of a babe mixed in with innocence laced right into desire.  Each of us born into a world not of our choosing affected by sin shaping.  Hearts dimmed before they are even tried and tested.

Dimmed. Dirty. Damned. We all are.  Some no longer.

Redemption eclipsing, an invite to new.  Welcome home.

Water baptism is very important to me and adherence to the faith I cling to.  I remember myself young nervous to be pushed into the water.  We stood in a pool.  Just days prior, I swam and played in those waters thinking nothing of God or sin or wrong.  Everything right in the moment lost in play and the pool.  But standing that day beside the pastor and witnessed by faithful onlookers, there I waited to be ‘dunked’.  He said some words that I’ll never recall but I remember them to be affectionate.  My hand held my nose shut.  And into the water I went.  Only mere seconds under the surface led me home.  Walking out of the pool to clapping and cheering that for whatever reason I understood.  Dripping water, I belonged.  Not to the church or to a man or teaching.  Something discovered me.  Redemption with a plan stretched much farther than day or age or understanding.  I’ll think fondly of that pool forever.

From Eden crumbled and a garden of peace and common dwelling with God hidden, one man’s choosing of sin then draped over all of humanity to come.  Even more historied than man’s choosing is God’s.  His of us.  Jesus came that we might live.  He came so that she would live.  And so into these waters stirring ancient, belonging to prophecy, made alive by the shed blood of Christ she disappeared only to resurface clean, new, redefined.

Two weeks ago in conversation, Emily decided to be water baptized.  She asked me.  That’s how I knew it was time.  So much of parenting is leading them in the right way to the point that wherever they are, the opportunity to choose is clearly presented to them.  If I do their choosing, they will never develop strong in choosing correctly.  Our talks lead us through her understanding the significance of water baptism: an outward expression of the faith growing in her heart.

I had the greatest privilege of baptizing her myself.  No sweeter moment shared between us than holding her in the water, praying with her, looking into her understanding eyes and then pushing her into the water of her choosing to surface discovered and decided.

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The priest is not made.  He must be born a priest; must inherit his office. I refer to the new birth—the birth of water and the Spirit.  Thus all Christians must became priests, children of God and co-heirs with Christ the Most High Priest.   - Martin Luther

affectionately known as mumzi.

:: by Marguerite Delcambre

We all grow in the soil of family cultivated and nurtured around us.  In that soil we stretch out, push into the dirt and feel life all around.  There are rocks and weeds and roots that we must move around, grow through and deal heavily with.  Regardless, it is in that soil that we flourish or flounder.  As a parent, it is my duty to nurture the soil my kids are growing in and keep it healthy.

In planning for this series of guest posts, I felt it would be lacking without one.  I would like to give you the slightest glimpse into the heart of my mother.  She is a woman who with an unassuming, quiet strength has made a way for me.  Constantly tending to the soil of our hearts in ways lasting, my sister and I grew healthy despite rocks and thinning soil drying in sun.  Death of a child, her firstborn, when I was only five.  Marriage suddenly no more after years of happy and whole.  Her faith strained undoubtedly, but in that straining, grew unmistakably deep loosening soil richer.

And as the soil in my life thinned, she arrived.  I will forever owe a debt to her that she will never accept for pausing her life to see that ours resumed.  Quietly cultivating soil.

I asked her to simply write a letter addressed to my daughters speaking into their future words that would carry.  I also asked my grandmother to write letters to my girls.  Maw maw Lucy is well into her nineties and she like my mom is still tending to the soil.  I am who I am largely due to these two remarkable ladies, my mom and my grandmother.[gallery link="file" columns="5"]

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Dear Elizabeth, Emily and Chloe,

I love you all so much, and I want God's very best for you.  You've already felt more pain in your short lives than most girls your age, but I see you as winners.  I love the young girls you're becoming.  I know you are who you are because you have had such a strong foundation laid by your daddy and mommy.

I have been praying for you from the time I heard the good news that you would be born.  I prayed that you would be safe, beautiful, smart, talented.  I'll always pray for you.  My prayer now is that you will follow Jesus all the days of your lives.  Then you will make wise choices. Choose to be honest in everything you do.  You'll make mistakes, but admit those mistakes and choose not to make the same mistake again.  You'll  feel so good about yourself and others will respect us.

Choose to love your sisters, watch out for each other, help each other.  When you think of Mommy and it hurts and makes you lonely, sad, or even angry, remember that your sisters feel that way too sometimes.  Be kind and loving to each other.  Friends will come and go but sisters will always be sisters.  Choose your friends wisely.  Having a few friends who believe in the same things you believe is better than having lots of friends who are untrustworthy friends, who may try to get you to do the wrong thing.

Choose carefully who to date...  My prayer is that your future mate will love Jesus first, then you, that he will be the leader and provider in your home, that he will honor and respect you.  First get to know the young man you fall in love with by dating him, become engaged, marry... Then have a home together and have babies.  That's God's plan for you ...in that order. Choose wisely.  You may hear lots of people say "its ok, everyone's doing it."  That's a lie.  There are some who choose being different from the crowd because the crowd may be doing the wrong thing.  Listen to that still small voice in your heart who wants to lead you the right way.

Remember that I'll always love you.  I hope that no matter what you face in life, you will always know that I am here for you.

Love you forever, Mumzi

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Thanks for reading this week.  And a lasting thank you to the amazing women who were my guests: Rachel McGowan (@_rachchristine) ||  Meshali Mitchell (@meshali) || Felicity White (@felicitywhite)

gold, not glitter.

:: by Felicity White

Because I have three daughters, I often find myself shopping for little girl things.  And sometimes this is frustrating for me because it appears that the clothing and toy designers of the world would like to cover you in glitter and fake fur and colored plastic, and I’d like to drench you in sensible wool or cotton instead.  And I know that isn’t very exciting.  But here’s my deal.

You don’t want to be glitter; you want to be gold. You don’t want to be lightweight and made of painted plastic and used to make cheap things look expensive. You don’t want to be, as one definition for glitter describes it, “used in craft projects, especially for children, because of the brilliant effects which can be achieved relatively easily.”

The truth is, brilliant effects are never achieved easily.

A real piece of gold shows this.  First the gold is extracted from the ground, usually with a lot of work from deep underground mines and caves.  Then it is sifted and washed to separate it from all the dirt. Then it is melted and shaped into thick bars.  A jeweler takes those bars and melts them down again, this time shaping the gold into beautiful chains, rings, etc.  It’s a long process, but it’s worth it.  This is why we pay so much for even a small piece of gold.

This is also why we make you take piano lessons and teach you to run or dance for exercise.  This is why we encourage you to be kind to your friends and respectful to your teachers.  This is why we don’t let you quit because something gets hard.  This is why we make you apologize when you’re wrong.  This is why you yell at us and call us mean. But doing any less would be to treat you like glitter and we won’t do that because we know you are gold.

Glitter is a cheap way to try to make something look better than it really is.  Glitter is used to simulate gold.  I want you to be authentically awesome people, not cheap fakes.  Our world, though, is steadily trying to convince us both that glitter is enough. Look at a comparison of Glitter and Gold and see for yourself:

1. Glitter is mass-produced in factories; Gold is a rare mineral found in the earth. You were created for more than boyfriends, parties, and sparkly nails.  You come from the earth and are created to make it a better place.  Remind yourself with the lines of this poem: “My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.”  You are an individual and should be proud of all that means.  Never do something just because everyone else thinks it’s okay.

2. Glitter has barely any weight; Gold is sold by its weight. To have a voice in this world, you’ll have to prove you have something worthwhile to say. You do that by learning and becoming an expert.  You don’t have to know everything, but you should know a lot about at least one thing.  You can be whatever you want to be, but be prepared to work for it if you want to do it well.

3. Glitter is cheap; Gold is expensive. It’s okay if people accuse you of being picky when it comes to men (and other major life decisions).  Wait for the man (or the college or the job) who is willing to meet your standard.  He should respect your parents, share your moral and faith code, promise to care for you always (and prove it now), and be your truest most faithful friend.  You don’t have to give yourself away to the first guy who shows up.  Be choosy.  You are worth it.

4. Glitter symbolizes temporary fame or glory; Gold is the symbol of eternity. In all of this, remember where you come from and what you were made for: God himself. Your Creator, your Savior, your Friend.  This life He gives is a blessing and a gift, but it is also full of pain that comes from many ages of the world rejecting this truth.  Things will go wrong and you’ll have to decide how that fits in your thinking.  I have a baby girl in Heaven named Ellery and, because of her, every day I remember that this life is only temporary. Someday, because I believe God is who He says He is, I’ll be in the best place ever and all the problems and troubles of this life will be gone.  Until then, I use the problems of this life to make me stronger and more dependent of God’s grace.  Anything here can be taken away from me (even the people I love the most); only He is a constant.  I can have Him now and I can have Him then.  I hold on.  I hope you will, too.

The world will try to treat you like glitter, sister, and you’ll have to remind them that you are gold.  Sometimes you’ll wish you could be glitter because it looks so much easier.  But resist the crazy of the masses and be rare instead.

Don’t settle for the cheap ways of glitter - be real gold!

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Felicity White teaches spiritual formation and literature courses at Heartland Christian College.  She is also a perpetual student - always reading, researching, and connecting.  She makes a home with her musician husband, Dan, and four perfectly imperfect children.  She feeds the dog because it's the right thing to do.  Her blog, Rare Rocks (www.felicitywhite.com), focuses on the challenging but worthwhile work of pursuing virtue and beauty even in the earthy places and phases of this life.

web :: www.felicitywhite.com twitter :: twitter.com/felicitywhite

things she wants to say.

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It's in the remembering that we live braver, hungrier and more convinced of hope and grace and beauty swallowing.

I have noticed small bright pink post it notes lying around in the same spot.  At first glance, I paid little attention, but a stack began forming messy demanding better attention.  For days I moved right passed the tiny little heap until my walking by caused a couple pieces to stir and drift off the counter top onto the wooden floor.  I have a tendency to sort of stack papers.  It’s my way of cleaning the kitchen or anything actually.  My process is quite simplistic.  Dispose of as much as possible as often as possible.  I tolerate clutter in a compartmentalizing sort of way.  Or maybe it’s procrastination.  The latter is honest response.  Compartmentalizing simply sounds more together, in control and sophisticated.  As a telling side note, procrastination is mode of operation for me.  It is a chronic characteristic I am working out of my life.  There simply is not enough room in the life of a single parent for much procrastination.  Bright pink landing on wooden floor.  The contrast unmistakeable in both size and color.  Leaning over to reach the few fallen, I could see that each brightly colored little piece of paper held scribbled words, messages deep and searching.

A daughter wandering through day, lost in thought and dream of a life different, the undisturbed continuing of the life she knew.  Sometimes dishonest with her smile bright and affectionate, hiding when she hurts or needs or wants but thankfully, bleeding out words that grab to find home in her heart wishing to grow only darker and deep.

“I wish I could tell her all the things I’m doing.” “She’d smile real big and be hugely proud of you, sweetie.”

Still reforming and in the piecing back together in beautiful miracle the life so disturbed by one quick blow, we wade through the unknown and questions lingering.  The trust that weans in days lasting too long makes us stronger together.

One easy to recognize evidence of her heart once devastated now growing stronger in the day to day is her courageous heart.  She’s braver in the bleeding, risking for reward and foregoing shadows.  On the basketball court for the first time, lined wood giving direction to game and position, the sound of soles shuffling, a ball bouncing, hands raised, the game still so foreign to her, I saw her heart laid bare.  She positioned herself vulnerable in front of yelling parents and strange onlookers for shared experience and enjoyment of game and friends.  In the confusion of plays and rules and game, she jumped right in determined to know and participate.  For her, it’s discovery, of who she is undeniably and deeply wound within the DNA.  It is also an aim at who she wants to be and is traveling toward.  All in the game, in the experience, she’s finding and becoming.  My heart soars quietly sitting in the stands each time.  Camera clicking.  Recording her evolution.

One day Elizabeth Marie will look long behind her and gaze upon a field of flowers in the wake of her pursuit.  In ways out of my reach, she is cutting a path for us all, not around, but straight through heart and mire and questions with unfitting answers.  Their hearts remain resilient even in the distance and miles away from that life.  Just last night, we talked about her notes and basketball.  She smiled honestly in the sadness revisited.  But together we left it again coming and going as visitors both stronger.

“Nothing will ever replace her.  The thought of losing mommy will always cause sadness, but both the memories and the life we live will always be brighter.  Promise.”

what makes love live.

“Well, do you love her?”   Quiet. Blank stare. Long.

His look part anger, part remembering, part brokenness.  I had no wise words to offer greater than the realization settling back into his world.  Something blocked it all, what he once loved so much in his own way, her.  Little things had been building.  Arguments kept, offenses recorded in their minds, every identified wrong used as weapons to cut.  They were both injured and now insecure, quick to cut and easily run.  What brought them back each time?  Love and all that had been invested.  Life together.  Imperfect indeed and sometimes twisted, but not easily dying either.  And there he sat in love.

This could be anyone’s story.  It is one, but also the story of many.

Relationships crumble when scores are kept left to be settled one day, lurking in every wrong and hurt and offense.  What once was so beautiful and full and giving, now a pit sinking and a hole keeping.  Two people convinced things have irreparably changed live in a dead love.

Deepening relationships meaningful and lasting are complicated always.  Two individuals whose lives are colliding and merging in hopes of achieving the greatest sense of belonging and being hinges on giving.  Giving stands in direct contrast to getting.  One cannot get love no matter how persistent the attempt and/or pursuit.  You can’t make someone love you lastingly.  They choose.  You choose.  That’s how love works.  Just because you buy her flowers today does not mean she’ll love you tomorrow, or even later that evening.  She will undoubtedly enjoy the flowers, attention, effort and maybe even creative detail, but that’s like, not love.  Too many of us buy flowers but do not give love.  There’s a bit of truth and good perception to the argument that Valentine’s day is merely a consumer driven industry, a golden opportunity for businesses to capitalize on people trying to buy love, but only the smallest bit of truth and good perception.  The ones holding tight fisted and defiantly to this argument defending their lack of romantic effort on this day to a somehow believed track record of loving their wives in the everyday typically seems to boil down to tightening a screw here and there, taking out the trash most nights, keeping a good roof overhead and so on.

Love is about more than doing.  It is giving in every chance and never noticing who gave last.  Love is blind in this regard.  It has to be.  The moment you start keeping notice and record of who gave last, your hand empties held out waiting to receive.  Love withers.  Wilting in the waiting.

Some of the best advice I ever did receive in regard to relationships succeeding, Be quick to forgive, and forget.  Hurts are sticky and offenses are clingy.  Allow them room in your heart and love will be strangled to a death.  Forgiveness is what makes love live.

Forgiveness is typically defined as the process of concluding resentment, indignation or anger as a result of a perceived offense, difference or mistake, or ceasing to demand punishment or restitution.

Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.  Love doesn't strut, doesn't have a swelled head, doesn't force itself on others, isn't always "me first," doesn't fly off the handle, doesn't keep score of the sins of others, doesn't revel when others grovel, takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, puts up with anything, trusts God always, always looks for the best, never looks back, but keeps going to the end.  Love never dies.  (1 Corinthians 13:4-8, The Message)