feed the dog.

Tomorrow is discovered and conquered and inhabited in every thought allowed residence in passing moments today. And why is tomorrow worth so much?

Today. Now. The day in which my feet stand. The smiles I see. The tears that fall in life too thin. The successes small and big. The sinking seen and untold. The hope and reach for more. The blind following.

These are all made worthy not by what’s behind or for the glory of present, but what’s ahead and in front.

And when what, whatever what is ahead in tomorrow, is lost, maligned or forgotten, we spin aimlessly through today unsatisfied and lost.  Hope runs distant, the day shrinks to minutes needing escape and we fade into the background of our own lives.

Feed the dog.

Maybe you’re like me.  Just maybe you have days traveling in reverse when you feel nothing works in your favor or goes your way.  Stub your toe in the dark of morning and fog of mind type of days when the coffee is not enough and smiles set flat on faces familiar; when deadlines race and friends go missing and you forget who you are.  Those days aren’t so bad, actually.  Everyone expects to have a bad day here and there.  They have a way of making the good days sweeter and forging a fortitude and perseverance in our pace.  No one hopes for those days, the bad ones, to last.  And there’s fear and anxiety all wrapped up in those days lasting longer than you can.

Feed the dog.

Some days, the feeling of inadequacy lingers uninvitedly.  Days age into week.  Week into weeks.  Weeks into months and beyond.  Then I’m living maimed by the acceptance that inadequacy exists as more of a plausible, lasting reality than not.

The book still being written.  The daughters still in need of strong guidance and whole love.

Inadequacy rules in my life when I give it living space unhinging dreams, dismantling hopes, ridiculing courage.

Feed the dog.

There’s a parable of sorts that will always stay with me.  I heard it in my younger years.  It was a simple teaching of a inner struggle and control.  Often, I go back to this teaching when circumstance and thought tilts life too far off path for too long.

"A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: 'Inside of me there are two dogs.  One of the dogs is mean and evil.  The other is good.  The mean dog fights the good dog all the time.'  When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, 'The one I feed the most.'"

Feed the man inside of you who is good and capable and courageous; the man who dreams and wins and pushes through; the man who receives God’s immeasurably good grace to do all that pulses within your heart.

Starve the liar inside breeding contempt and fear and disconnect.

Each day, wrap up tomorrow with the thoughts given lasting residence in your heart.

the mountains whisper tomorrow.

at 3am we left under the cover of morning dark.  life bending flat, brushing close to the ground.  wilting tired from days long and nights somehow longer.  this is precisely when vacation means more than sand and waves and souvenirs lost on the drive home; if you’re even lucky enough for them to last that long.  the dates set aside for no work, the work I run to and find identity in and the work I feel chained to, seemed to rest ahead for weeks.  the closer I got, the more I felt I needed time away, from work, from writing, from planning, from thinking about the next step; disconnect to rest, stretch and allow meandering thoughts to roam and echo with no worry of when they’d return with answer or solution. I knew our vacation held this type of rest when I packed my mountain bike.  a week in the mountains of Colorado without a schedule to ream us in or rush us.  just the four of us, me and the girls, visiting friends that feel more like family.

driving through the early morning dark, they slept warmly in the back seat of the car.  I prayed for moments together, the kind that etch themselves on hearts‘ memory and last forever.  I wanted to see breathtaking beauty, the kind that’s new and foreign, uncommon to everyday and them remember it.  I felt like we needed it, the break together, the fresh breath, the change of pace.

as dark gave way to dawn, each girl began to wake to a new day.  the sun casting gently on the mountains all around us, a sense of adventure freed us from the rut we settled in to.  they shared hopes for the week ahead in the mountains.  together, we explored Pikes Peak, Estes Park, the Rocky Mountains and plenty of other spots holding so much historied beauty.  just the night before we left, after hiking through mountains, standing at waterfalls, being dwarfed by cliffs and feeling like we could touch the sky, Elizabeth, my oldest, popped open her heart deeper.

through warm tears, she shared the pain of her grief, hurts of today in seeing friends with their mothers and fears of tomorrow unknown.  she just cried.  she was letting go again.  “thank God for these mountains,” I thought.

for what felt like an eternal day that I’d never leave, we talked through each pain, hurt and fear.  and she let go.

...and that’s when remembered all over again that parenting is really just about being there.

we lived little adventures during our week in the mountains that will always be owned in our hearts.  the laughs and jokes, the challenges of pushing through physically for miles just to spy a waterfall, the drives to peaks lifting us above all holding to us too tightly, they will always be remembered.  my little girls who are stretching for what’s ahead and me wanting more, we all heard the whispering of tomorrow in the mountains together.

here’s to many more adventures in our lives leading us, stretching us, connecting us together.  it’s my hope and prayer that in each day both regular and exhilarating, God would guide and I would listen.

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at the end of their lives.

Two images set fixed in my mind always.  One projected by my hopes and sweat and prayers, the other locked forever in sweetest memory.  Both hold beginnings.  One day the projected image will exist.  My job is to make sure it is not some maladapted version of what I see and hope for now. For each of my daughters, I hold two images.  I will forever remember the first moment I held them as newborns sucking in life and breathing out identity.

Each time, my heart melted completely different, like it never had before.  As their little eyes opened they couldn’t see much or make sense of what was all around them.  They squirmed and cried announcing arrival and beginning.  That is when the second image began to form: who they would one day be.

The two images fixed in place hold each other in supportive tension.

God had much to do with their first beginning and arrival into the world.  I have a momentous and deeply impressionable role in what I think of as their second beginning when they stand on their own cutting their own way in life.

For now, I am protector and guide to them, and if what I read about father/daughter relationships holds true, years from now at the end of their lives, I will be on their mind.  That’s such a heavy and strong thought that keeps me praying and shaping them with what I learn and know.  So I try to envision the end of their lives, what they might think, remember, have lived through and most importantly how they may have made it.

Did they live well? ...risk all for dreams and desires? ...love deeply and forever?

What I can’t handle is the opposite possibility of what I hope for in their lives.

I never want them to live hemmed in by fear, insecurity or whatever clings and pulls them closer to the ground, remaining small and insignificant.  The thought of them at the end of their lives regretting, lonely for dreams formed in youth, loved incompletely and somehow misaligned from what we once hoped for, absolutely breaks my heart now.

This heartache serves to be a very capable guide for me as their father.  Beyond parenting strategies and developmental challenges, those two images fixed together in my heart in cause and effect relationship, uncover resolve and undying determination to love them despite difficulty and guide them through precarious.  Courage and god-like bravery defy any distortion of who I hope them to be in life.

After all, God made me for this, for them.  And them for me.  I’m sure of it.

As a parent, it is likely easy for you to fall into ruts and routine cut into your relationship with your kids by fear.  Fear that our effort will one day reach a threshold where they overcome by normally accepted statistics and hormonal changes.  I hold tightly to the truth that perfect love casts out fear.  1 John 4:18.

As God perfectly and completely loves me, fear has been displaced.  His love teaches me to love fearlessly as I love and teach my daughters the same.

At the end of their lives, when I’m told I will be on their minds, I want them to still be breathing in life and exhaling identity.  The feeling of satisfaction and love deeply rooted in their hearts as they think of their own kids that they helped steer and establish from the heart that I helped form within them from the beginning of their lives.

in a moment much too big.

“We are not now that strength which in old daysMoved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.” from “Ulysses” (Tennyson)

In moments heavy, thinning in the heat of an everlasting day, when I’m not quite sure my heart has clarity to see and feet the fortitude to move another eternal inch, an error clouds thought every time.  I slow to a crawl, forget what got me this far and act like a child or alien to difficulty.  As if this particular time, in all its weighted glory, is the first time my heart feels strain, beats quicker and shallower in the face of difficult circumstance.  I doubt ability, lose sight of tomorrow and beyond and shrink to the size of the moment ...or smaller.

Gone are any traces of faith or courage, valor or bravery, displaced and decayed by worry, fear and everything wrong.

My mistake is to value trust as an option.  Trust is never an option.  That is, it should never be reduced to only an option.

Maybe you’re like me in that trust is yet to mature beyond the grasp of circumstance.  If so, I’d imagine you, too, wrestle with not trusting enough, often responding in difficulty with a heart bent toward doubt and uncertainty.

At any given moment straining, doubt could certainly be seen as a much higher value in my life.  Because they remain opposing options, to trust or to doubt, the one with the higher value, the one that makes more sense and seems inevitable, wins.

Perhaps trust needs no measuring at all.

Maybe trust does not need to be matured to any certain size, but constantly present in the heat of a day burning out of control just as in the cooling calm of an afternoon breeze whispering comfort.

Time and circumstance will weaken you.  You will fall.  You will fail.

Strength comes to those who allow the slightest bit of trust to mix into doubt clouding.  From their knees they rise again standing in a moment much too big.  Where they have failed, they are found.

All we can ever really do is trust.

Proverbs 3:5-6 :: To trust God with all of your heart requires nothing more than the confession that you are not enough; not your actions, nor your ability or heart.

No moment is ever too big for a heart abandoned to trusting God fully.

where promise will take you.

I miss home.  The smell of fresh cut grass.  Air heavy and sticky hanging on shoulders slowing time and holding memories.  Playing outside until it’s too late to see.  Laying under stars still brightly shining.  The ease of day holding tomorrow comfortably and capably when what is yet to come comes in dreams pleasant and waiting; never rushed to get too, for the day still is where you want to be. The way life used to put together and make sense. I woke up this morning missing the life I once knew, wanting to go home, forget about where I am, lose myself in her familiar embrace.  I say her of home because she embraced me well.

I am a sojourner moving at the speed of yesterday’s sound.  I once felt found.  Now, I’m more lost.  The path buried beneath leaves of a season past.

Hope rings in my ears a bit louder, clearer and sweeter, with each passing day.  And now, I’m just walking from there to somewhere every step forward further and closer defining what will be.

It’s not c’est la vie.  We are not bound to life’s swing and circumstance.  The path is not life’s to lead.  It’s ours to follow.

I heard a friend share a promise yesterday that I no longer believed in.  Until he reminded me, at least.

“...that the God who started this great work in you would keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears.”

Promise.  It’s the magic of home, why all makes sense, why you would never want another day too badly.

All roads of promise always lead home.  No matter the detour, impasse or difficulty; the gaps in life you don’t want to remember and the days you wish would burn away, promise reigns over all whether you bow in thankful exhale and submission or break and run in anxiety and fear.

I still miss home today.  Days will rest easier again.  Until then, God’s promise to keep at it guides in the up and down, the twisting and falling and the reach to summit.

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