the loss of effective parenting.

I see their smiles now easy and free.  Peace quiets worry at this sight. And joy fills my heart in the deep of night.

Most days lived under our shared roof sprawl out without much difficulty.  Comfort and security exists again.  I remember the days burning hot and dry when we lived a million miles from one another exiled to our own island on fire.  How unending those days felt!  How unrelenting those waves beat against our shore while offering no respite.

The days, weeks and months following their mother's death, my wife then, will forever be immortalized as a graceful metamorphosis on the timeline of our family, the grand redesign of us now, then and ahead.  For nearly 3 years now, we have been learning life again, finding joy in mundane free from extraordinary ordeal.  Finding joy in day unfolding with boring, unassuming regularity; that’s how you know your heart is beating alive and not a shell of yesteryear.

To be clear, happiness is what we pull from the sky, the smiles we try to wear as long as we can bare, but joy ...joy finds us as the sky falls to find us.

Joy swells in white flags waving and in the end of the pursuit of happiness.  It glimmers rebelliously amidst darker days blanketed by fear, worry, doubt and is the praise of screw ups who know better than to trust the feeble strength of their own hand.

The light in each of their eyes dims, their faces hang in heavier moments, and I’m reminded again close to my chest I have no guarantees.  Nothing promised apart from the breath drawn right now; not even the next day as I once believed.

Belief, that’s all we have and the only choice ever really needed to be made.

And that’s what fuels joy: belief.

The folly of the proud is self-reliance, but the triumph of the humble is joy despite all things, anything, independent of day, night, struggle, ease and especially fairness.

Maybe you’re like me in that I worry often as a parent.  I push hard into most days and try to squeeze as much as I can out of it because there are no absolutes or guarantees that my effort put into my children will produce well - adjusted, loving people whose hearts belong to God and affections to the life given soon to them.  I know as many parents who do everything as right as one can do who sit up late at night wondering what went wrong as the others who stumbled about aimlessly trampling inconsistently in selfish and ignorant circles whose kids end up running an honorable bid for sainthood.

There are simply no guarantees in life as there are in parenting.  “Train up a child in the way he should go”* . . . and he may in fact stray.  He may return one day to God’s grace and goodness, but maybe he won’t.  No one saves, save for God.  That’s why we must only believe.

Then they said to him, "What must we do, to be doing the works of God?"  Jesus answered them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent."**

And so in our quest and effort as parents, we must courageously believe in God’s love and plan more than our pocketed strategies and parenting techniques said to tame the heart of the unruliest, liveliest little child.  For when we trust in God’s ability in their lives and despite our parenting, we transcend human effort of dust trying to cover dust and allow Eternity to shape, form and guide into all ahead.

As a dad to three little beautiful girls, my heart winces a little more with each increasingly complex conversation.  I do good in my own effort as their dad, but soon we’ll travel hand in hand to an impasse where my foot will slip and my hand not able to hold.

Right there my heart better be ready to let go and grab hold of God’s grace and ability.  Right then, my heart must be able to believe or all that I’ve done is try diligently to look capable for as long as I could until my hand could hold no longer.

:::::::

“The law says, ‘do this,’ and it is never done.  Grace says, ‘believe in this,’ and everything is already done.” -Martin Luther

Believe in the future already owned by the One who purchased a day unable to be bought by impoverished hearts.  Be free.  Belong.  Trust.

image found @ www.ronitbaras.com  ||  *Proverbs 22:6  ||  **John 6:28-29

together, out of good.

Grant, O Lord, that as we are baptized into the death of they blessed Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, so by continual mortifying our corrupt affections we may be buried with him; and that through the grave, and gate of death, we may pass to our joyful resurrection; for his merits, who died, and was buried, and rose again for us, they Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Easter-Even, The Collect.

None of us are good.  No one one is.

As we approached the darkest of this shared season of Lent, we touched the deepest, most intimate wrong buried in of our human hearts.  Good, the lie that we are okay, can make it out on our own and all we need, all we want dwells within us.

The serpent hiss, perverted benevolence ringing in hearts rooted in choice.

We are all okay, good from beginning, innocent - a diseasing lie eating us.

Their eyes widened a bit and ears tuned in to words undoing us.  No good in us.  There is brooding wrong within each of us demanding surrender, lording desire; a problem sitting heavy on the chest of mankind.  Sin that won’t leave us alone and a scab that we won’t quit picking at.

For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.  (Romans 7:18, ESV)

An illuminated reality in my role as parent has become apparent: just as I accept that there is no good within me, there is no good within them either.  None.  Their hearts live just as displaced as mine always choosing that which the heart wants rather than what it needs.  My daughters lie to protect themselves, hate when their offended and hurt, take what’s not theirs, whine, complain, grumble and ignore others in need for the sake of comfort.  Despicable hearts dirty in sin no matter how we pretty the outer.  We stink the smell of offense.

And this particular realization and confession delivered us properly to the darkness of Lent, the eve of redemption evermore.

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.  (Romans 6:3-4, ESV)

My approach as dad now broadened focused on uprooting good from their hearts to give way for grace properly, set but then, that night when our Lenten discussions crescendoed well to redemption, the release held greatest importance.  As our devotional book closed, our hearts opened floating free.  Their little heads bowed as if looking dead into their guilty hearts and with quiet words Grace displaced good.

Like the good thief hanging guilty next to Jesus, grace and forgiveness found them readily and easy.  With gratitude and solemness we looked ahead to the remembrance of Good Friday and the promise forthcoming on Easter morning.

Praise the Lord, grace has come.

together, in the branches.

 

Nothing beats late nights with amazing friends meandering through conversation of all that was, is and hopefully will be.  Of equal irreplaceable delight is waking up late into morning with family and those friends to another day of snowy mountain adventure.

And this is vacation; a definite break from busy, from striving and reaching and worry about not being formidable enough for the dreams swirling inside.

When we leave the Colorado mountains, nights return to earlier endings and my alarm sounds annoyingly before dawn waking me to another day, I will be rested and ready after more than 2 weeks of vacation and time away to reset and heal.  But for now, I write into a quiet morning beside a steaming mug of chai tea awaking me even more, all while lost in the view of snow capped mountains whispering adventure both now and into life ahead.

:::::::

As we continue together into Lent, discussions of the heart deeper unfold.  Words of challenge and grace fill our conversations together throughout our days away in the mountains.  I anticipated a break.  In the weeks leading up to vacation, we followed a pattern of reading and praying together for grace to help us engage in giving up of conveniences to grasp a greater understanding now of God in our day to day.  Instead of our pattern completely vanishing in the snow and easy days, each of the girls asked how and what we would fast and more importantly, when.

In their asking and reflecting of our togetherness in this Lent journey, a conversation from before the mountains, snow and rest, returned to me; a conversation of heart and words with Elizabeth, my eldest daughter.

There we sat.  The two of us words hanging in grace sheltering our weakness and covering our mistakes.  The greatest erasing of wrong leaving no sign except what we redraw in our effort earning unbelief that God could possibly be that good and undeservingly accepting of our human hearts.

She sat in sadness judged by her own heart, tangled in thought.

“Dad, ...sometimes I get so angry and frustrated at life.  I feel confused and lost.  Sometimes I say bad words in my head, really, really bad words, Dad.”

I allowed for the pause between us to encapsulate the moment, her helpless sinking knowing that scripture reading, prayer and conversation all shared together had been raking over her heart ...and finding her.

“What words do you think when you’re angry?”

“Uhh ... really, really bad words.”

“I see.  They must be really bad if you don’t want to say them.”

I sped up our conversation out of her lingering words suspended in guilt with a hopefully lasting image lifting her sinking.  Often I describe our life together in terms of journey, a landscape of rising mountains, descending valleys and sometimes treacherous impasses.  This image lifting her out of guilt and mistakes was one of a towering tree stretching substantially over us.

Grace like a tree shelters us from guilt striking down from darker skies and together we are safe in its impenetrable branches.

“Um, what?”

All three of my daughters deal with my words dragging romantic and descriptive.  They are used to just staring at me until I’m done and I’m used to their blank looks lost in words loaded with meaning.  I like our conversations that way.  Questions are sure to ensue giving way for their ownership pulling understanding into little hearts.

I pulled back the curtain a bit and assured Elizabeth that emotions exist very real in our hearts and our responses, even the bad unrepeatable words, don’t separate us from God’s fierce love.  To her surprise, I told her that often those words, even the worst offenders launch from my heart, too.

“...and that’s okay, Elizabeth.”

Grace’s strong branches will always hold us up and cover us wholly.  As a parent, no greater gift can be given than the assurance that all will be well and all, despite emotion and weakness of heart.

Grace given. Grace received.

...all in the branches together.

*image copyright inmenlo.com

together, into the undoing.

Another step down into the hazy, deeper, covered parts of our hearts where words are better to be whispered intently as to let them escape into normal conversation.  This is new, hallowed ground for all of us to be treading together. Grace like a scandal frees hearts held unknowingly in much more than innocence - in ignorance.

Child, you are not free.  Since our eyes first witnessed life and day, sin holds both you and me.  Liberty, a mirage vanishing in the heat of day burning hot and older.

As we moved into the second week of Lent together as a family, I read aloud a story in Scripture that moved my daughters’ hearts (Luke 7:36-50).  In the story, a man named, Simon, who was a righteous man known by good deeds and effort invited Jesus into his home for dinner.  Jesus accepted and reclined at table as Simon’s guest.  Upon hearing of Jesus’ presence at Simon’s house, a woman enters into the story and not with little disturbance.  Her affection interrupts Simon’s dinner conversation as she kisses Jesus’ feet washed in her tears and expensive perfume and wiped clean not with a towel but with her own hair.  

In judgement, Simon, the right doer, reduces the woman to a dirty sinner unfit for their company and Jesus to a disproved prophet fooled by the woman he allowed to care for him.  How could this woman share a table with Simon who deserved a seat with Jesus?  Why wouldn’t Jesus correct her and send her away?

He must not be all that He claims to be, not by my standard or god I know.  This is what raced through Simon’s right doer mind.

How often we judge right and wrong by our own hand and effort. And how wrong we are with repetitive regularity.

Last night we read through this story again and the question still hung between us.

“Dad, did she really kiss Jesus’ feet and use her hair to dry them?  Why would she do that?  Seems kinda inappropriate.”

And maybe that’s the best description of grace: inappropriate.  Appropriately, we should be accused called guilty for the sin we harbor within - the anger, the hatred, the lust, the lying, the selfishness - but we are not.

Together we talked about the gift of God, grace, and like the shameless woman, our response to God’s inappropriate love of us.

My challenge as a parent is to lead us into the undoing of our hearts bound by sin and marred in two dimensional right and wrong; to allow grace room enough for its roots to press deep down and break heavy soil loose and free.  For my daughters to know God as a plenteous giver of grace and acceptance is to set their hearts free ready for their days ahead.  One day they may find themselves marginalized by their decisions, dirty in their doing, cornered in by mistakes and rejected by all right.  Grace will be there and I want them to recognize its fearless reach.

::::::: He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. [Psalm 1.3]

together, into the thin.

  Today I didn’t feed the kids.

Well, almost.  Sure they had breakfast and lunch, and I’m sure a couple necessary preparatory snacks between the two, but their after school routine was void of the coveted snack.  They went without and not without a fight.

In fact, I reminded them in the morning, “Remember, nothing after school.  Nothing.”

Even before I reached home, a text message from one of my dear daughters popped up on my phone begging for a snack.  As soon as I graced the doorway of our home in obvious distress, the pleading began. “Dad, I’m sstttaaarrrving!  There’s no way I can make it to dinner!”

“Well, you have to.  That’s what we agreed on and committed to doing.  And that’s it, ok?,” I replied with the edgy frustration of going a day, a single day, but not quite a whole day yet, without food.  I meet so few people who are fans of fasting, maybe the idea and even the discipline, but not mid practice.

This was their first go at fasting: not a whole day without, nor a skipped meal, but a single, small and limitedly nutritious snack.

I knew it would be a challenge for them and their desires, but during this first week of Lent we focused on temptation, how our immediate desires do not have to be satisfied and dictate our way in life.

Wants are different than needs.  That was the teaching focus as we embarked on celebrating and observing Lent together.

Once the opulent petitioning subsided and they halfway believed that they would in fact make it from lunch to dinner with little difficulty, I reminded them of our reasoning.  Lent.

O Lord and Master of my life! Take from me the spirit of sloth, faint-heartedness, lust of power and idle talk, But give me rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience and love to my servant. Yea, O Lord and King! Grant me to see my own errors and not to judge my brother; for thou art blessed unto ages of ages.  Amen

- St. Ephrem, the Syrian

Lent marks a time when the Gospel is internalized and accepted deeply.  It spans the observed time between the excitement and expectation of Advent, the coming of the Christ, and the eternally joyous resurrection.  Lent gives space and opportunity in the in between for us to repent of our indifference toward God, meditate on His goodness and pray for help to be more like who we should be.

My little daughters don’t fully grasp the gravity of Lent, the humility, the repentance, the letting go for a tighter hold.  I’m not always completely sure I do, but one thing I do know fully is that parenting is about showing and doing not telling and pointing.

Together, for the first time, we committed to observe Lent as a family.

So I set a course for us to travel together over the next several weeks through this season of Lent into dimmer waters, the abyss of our hearts not always visited, not always wanted.

Last Wednesday evening, Ash Wednesday, on our normal family cook nights, we cleared the table after the made meal and read scripture.  We read about Jesus’ temptation following His 40 days alone and without food.  The girls asked questions and began to connect the dots between temptation, prayer, scripture tucked away in our hearts and response.

Then, several days later, came our day to fast.  They squirmed through it and begged for a different course but we were walking together, together we would stay.

There’s so much to go wrong in parenting, so many pitfalls and mistakes, so much to seep through the cracks.  One can’t possibly always know exactly how to be, what to say and which correct way to go at every fork and bend.  But I do believe the key to parenting and getting those little hearts nipping at your heels one moment and running from you the next is to show, display, guide - live life out in front of them giving them a pattern and context to mimic and to own.

In the weeks ahead, they will be challenged to go without other things (for a day) often clouding and busying our hearts.

...without television ...without sweets ...without internet ...without music

...and a couple others that will undoubtedly provoke more opulent begging and pleading.

Trim the fat.  Prune the branches.

Pray for them, friends:)

interlude, the music plays on.

Every person both great and small is who they are behind the scenes, inside of closed doors where they are truly who they are removed from pretense and pretending faces of happy or important. As twelve worn months piled high, slightly leaning, giving way then to the year new ahead, my bones yearned to rest, to stop again with no rush to start again.

Another year, called 12.

In the sway of one year moving in to another, the gentle and timely transition of a year aged to completion and the anticipation of the next arriving, I only felt flat.  Months unnamed and unnoticed were moving by like the sky stuck in fast forward moving too fast to settle familiar.

My manuscript stood finally nearest completion than ever before.  I couldn’t wait to write about being so close to finish especially given the questions and my writing timeline that felt more like a noose tightening most days.  Recounting the struggle and happy drudgery, I should add, the near holy like perseverance to the end and the discipline forged in the learned experiential craft of writing a book of inaugural importance, yes, I couldn’t wait to write about my writing.  But when my pen laid down and my fingers recoiled from the keys following the closing line of my book, I wanted nothing more than to disappear a little.

one day you realize morning sounds monotonous the music faded, notes blurred, verses leaked into puddles, a dull echo eats the chorus and you know then better than when the music first began that monotony is the sound of dying, the stop of trying the laying down of arms to sleep through another day eyes still opened

This first book that I’ve written and shaped together from the learning and finding of God, hope, love true and unfailing and overwhelming grace in the thinnest of life took a lot out of me.  My writing schedule stretched my life and time out leaving little time for me to breathe and just be.  Part of me needed to be busy to distract my mind and cover over the hurt of loosing a life that I loved so.  So I started writing myself - who I was and would be.

I started recaptured slices of life in little pieces.  Everything felt tragedy stained.  Even the good was good notably because of how stunningly it balanced the bad.

At times, I felt myself to be more of a character, the wounded hero, in the story I was living out: a good man who lost his wife now learning to raise their three little daughters alone.  This feeling motivated me to be greater, to live more courageously and start all over again.  I leapt into a whole new life as a writer and a single dad and for the most part, I looked at myself and situation from the outside in.  The external motivation of who I was living to be pushed me ahead.

finish the book :: tell the story :: change our lives

In essence, I was shaping together my new life and our family from the outside, drawing strength from the hope of all that could and would be.  We would be healthy together as a family because of what we were - single dad and three little girls learning life again.  I would be a writer because of what I was doing - writing our story.  I would be whole again because of all that was ahead.

That’s when the music sounded flat and faded.  I was a character bound to the story, a fatalistic pace to where every day began to bleed the same way.

In the finishing of my manuscript, I pulled away from the table and determined to break from writing for a bit.  I had to remove myself from myself in order to be myself fully.  I got back to living on the inside, behind the scenes shaping my life and my family again.

I stayed out later with good friends talking about life and listening, slept in a little more, read a little more and met a girl.

I learned all over again that life is formed and perfected not out on the stage but behind the scenes where you are who you are, diligently and faithfully tending to the life given.

And I heard the music swell again and separate into verses full of vibrant context and a chorus echoing free.

acquiesce.

I used to think everything would be all right. .all right

And I called it good.

Bowed low at the altar of padded pews and neatly folded answers, All was good and all was good.

Paths lead gently into tomorrow.

I walked with a smile that feared the night that never came.

Then one day, a man visited my door on an usually average afternoon.  At the hearing of his knock, my heart weakened.  Deep thuds sounded on the door I held key to not asking for entrance but announcing arrival.  Even in the absence of invitation, he would not be shunned, rebuked or dispelled.

I just held my breath as the water rose higher and prayed for my lungs to seal.

All is not well, friends.  As in, not all okay.

Days burn uncontrollably wrong. Evil and wrong lie in wait, tangled in the day like weeds in flowers.

Don’t pluck them lest they all get pulled in a day not ready for beauty to look ugly. Tears escape broken hearts holding together weakly.  Frailty is the song on the lips of those whose hearts dare not die alone.  Life gets so twisted and sideways that we wake after days lost drifting to a something we barely even recognize.  This is not what we dreamed of when all was all right.

In the strain and the sweat and the swearing of holding the world while fumbling for good, a small voice whispered, “Can we just break?”

“Is everything all right?” “Is everything all right?” “Is everything all right?” “Is everything all right?” “Is everything all right?” “Is everything all right?”

Is everything all right?

 “I am broken parts sure of only weaknesses     With nothing left to show, no illusions left to hide behind”

All men must break before they bare.  Lift our hearts out of their cage in worship and wonder, in defeat and abandon.

In the dark of night, the lone falling, the cold sinking ... the death of you and me and us quieted in the birth of beginning again

“All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”

...all has always been well and all right.  Before breath and time dying, God celestially expansive then gloriously finding his created lost souls losing ground and breaking loose in night.

Another day awoke me from staring too long at pictures burning.  Day young and new brushed my shoulder broken then, now healed under pressure that ended.

I now know that to be good, rightly. And amen and amen.