value

The Grass-Eating Ox We’ve Chosen

Psalm 106:20 says, “They traded their glorious God for a statue of a grass-eating ox!” I totally recognize we discussed this verse yesterday, but it’s so good, I wanted to share it again.

The Israelites, the chosen people of the Living God, who had just been rescued from slavery, at the first opportunity, coerce (really, it didn’t take too much coercion, they mostly just asked) Aaron to make them a statue of a golden calf to worship, which he does. They are the people He’s chosen. This is the lump of melted bling they’ve chosen.

I don’t imagine we have many golden calves in our homes, not too many statues we kneel in front of. This story is factual history, the golden calf was a real thing, but it’s also a metaphor. We are Israelites. We are afraid. We are asking where God is, will He come back, are we safe, what are we supposed to do now??? We still have golden calves, even if they’re not golden calves. So, the questions yesterday were, “What is our grass-eating ox? Where have we traded our glorious God for something much much less? Where have we set our hearts?”

Today, the question is, where has our fear deteriorated our faith, broken our state of love & trust, and led us to replace the True God with junk, just as the Israelites did in the wilderness thousands of years ago?

Maybe not junk, but certainly junk in comparison. Our work isn’t junk. Our children aren’t junk. Our spouses aren’t junk. But they don’t provide salvation, they don’t save. They don’t instill us with worth, they don’t give us the answer for the vital question we’re all asking, “Who am I?” They fade. They let us down. Statues break.

In the fish tank in front of me as I write, my son has a statue of a mechanical panther that is as awesome as any fish tank decoration you’ll ever see. I always had a No Fishing sign in my aquariums (aquaria? aquarii?) as a boy, and that was pretty awesome. This is even better. The fish swim through it, some lay along the base, the plecostomus (plecostomi?) suck on the legs, they really enjoy it. It gives texture, detail, pleasure. If it was gone, we’d all miss it a lot. When it wasn’t in there, I thought I could see longing in the gourami’s eyes. But if I reached into the water, took it out right now, and dropped on the kitchen floor, it would break. Our No Fishing signs broke from time to time. And that dumb golden calf at the foot of Mount Sinai broke, too. So I ask those questions only to say, it doesn’t matter. Abraham destroyed his dad’s idols and Moses ground the calf into powder. That’s the other thing about statues (idols), they can be removed. We can throw them out with the trash – symbolically, of course. We don’t need to actually throw our kids away, leave our spouses, or quit our jobs. They make the tanks we swim in so much cooler. We simply have to throw away their position at the top of our lives. We have to strip their ability to push the buttons or dictate our value.

(I make that sound easier than it is. It’s simple, but certainly not easy.)

We can decide today, each moment, over and over or for the first time, to set them on SomeOne Who doesn’t fade, change, break, or fail. SomeOne Who can tell us who we are, and why. We can let Him love us into a new reality, where statues can be relieved of the pressure of completing us. A new reality, where our missing pieces are found and we can stop looking for them in empty holes and hollow spaces. A new reality, where we will be free.

Not Better…

“I’m speaking to you out of deep gratitude for all that God has given me, and especially as I have responsibilities in relation to you. Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it’s important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.” Rom. 12:3 MSG

This is from the Eugene Peterson’s Message translation, and before we go one step further, let’s just take a quick second to think about what a gigantic undertaking it would be to write your own translation of the Bible!!! He’s writing his own translation of the Bible, and for me, some days the sink is so full of dishes, it’s hard to know where to start.

Anyway. Romans 12 begins with offering ourselves, our bodies, as a living sacrifice, not conforming to the world but being transformed by the renewing of our minds, then moving into “understanding ourselves.” 

I have been sitting for the last few months thinking on the universal struggle between pleasing people and pleasing God, or just how big the audience is: either One or a million. The crazy thing with this ‘pleasing’ confusion is that it always circles back to that old familiar space, where I am “not good enough.” If the thing I want most is to please my neighbor and my boys and the Angel and you and the guy next to me at the gym and the driver in the car next to me and on and on, at some point, I won’t and then I’m forced to face the shocking fact that I am not, in fact, perfect at all. And if I’m not perfect, if I let them (anyone) down, if I am not good enough, then what am I? What is my value? What am I worth?

That’s when the rotten tapes begin to roll, deafening in my head, like they have a billion times before, with the answers. “You are worthless. You are nothing, pathetic. You will never be enough. (Repeat with different words, examples, tones, different levels of urgency.)” These answers very nearly irreparably broke middle school me. I still hear them from time to time, the difference is that I now see them as the lies they are. But if they aren’t true, then what is?

The NIV states verse 3 as: “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.” It was that “but rather think of yourself as…” that hooked me and kept me from thinking of anything else.

How am I to think of myself? That is exactly the question. The verse begins, “not too highly,” and that’s not a problem usually. Maybe some of us fight that battle, but mostly, I think we remain mired in the sludge of contempt. (I do recognize that this is another facet of idolatry – to think that we are the exception to God’s love/redemption/acceptance is awfully arrogant. Different sides of the same ugly coin.) But to be honest, I don’t understand the rest of the verse. I immediately thought it meant that maybe we should think of ourselves the way God does – but is that actually what this verse says?

That’s how I found myself in the Message, and as it turns out, I was sort of right. Generally, I think that is exactly how we should see that beautiful child of God in the mirror.

But this verse says, “by what God is and what He does for us.” As if we are covered with His skin, and it is no longer possible to see ourselves without the lens of Jesus Christ. And if we follow this line of thinking, we arrive at a surprising destination where all of the questions we’ve been asking have done nothing but prove how misguided we’ve been. 

Is our goal to please God or to please our co-workers?

Either way, we then “misinterpret ourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God,” seeing ourselves as “what we are and what we do for Him.” 

The passage continues with a cool body analogy, where we bring our gifts to the table for Our God and each other – and why? Because we have been set free from all of our have-to’s, all of our questions, where all that’s left is Him and His infinite grace. We are His and they are His gifts with which to bless us all.

Asking questions about worth and value, wasting time on perfection, seems to just keep us trapped in the old skins that simply don’t fit anymore. We are not better, we’re brand new.

Mile Markers

My sister lives in New Jersey, so to get to her from here, I drive the Pennsylvania Turnpike. There are these green reflective signs, every tenth of a mile that illuminate your progress. 289.8, 289.9, 290.0, and on and on. Sometimes it feels like each sign is separated by forever, others fly by so fast I miss them entirely, 289.9 to 301 in a blink. The point is, they’re helpful to show us where we are along the journey to wherever we’re headed. Like the arrow on the mall directory (when there were still malls) that said “You Are Here.”

Sometimes in our lives, we get those same kind of markers. We were there, and now we’re here. Maybe that’s not the greatest news, right? I don’t wear the same size pants that I wore in high school, and when I bought the bigger size, I had to face the new marker. But maybe it’s great, too. What I’m thinking about (and lamenting) is how often we get so distracted by the pieces that we don’t ever take a moment to step back and see the whole picture. We don’t know how we got here because we don’t really even know where here is.

Last week, the baseball season began for the team I coach. Our first game was against our cross town rivals and we lost on a walk-off in the bottom of the last inning. It was a heartbreaker and I won’t bore you with details because you might not care at all about youth sports, but let me just tell you I made a terrible decision on the last play of the game. If you make a terrible decision in the first inning that costs a run, it’s still a run, but the one in the last inning (ESPECIALLY the last play!!!!) feels worse, like you lost the game. I gathered the boys and told them the mistake I made and why it was such a bad mistake, apologized, then reminded the boys that the sun will come up in the morning and it’ll be a new day. They all made mistakes, too, and needed to know mistakes happen and do not define them. A 16u loss is not the sum total of my life and it won’t be theirs either.

Having said that, I sat on that bench long after everyone else left thinking about that 1 mistake. Maybe the sun wouldn’t come up the next day for me, right? When I was young, playing baseball through college, a loss would leave my soul in ruins for days. A loss in a championship game where I made the error on the last play (which I had) for months. I can still see the ball rolling under my glove in nightmares. I would snap at friends and family, cry in my room, and feed the monster that was always berating me, telling me I was not now and would never be good enough. This sharp steel tether to my performance cost me so much of my life. I didn’t want that for my boys on that team, wanted them to give everything they had for each other, to the game, empty themselves on the field, and sleep like babies, knowing they had given all. Mostly because I want them – and you and me – to give all to everything in their lives; their God, marriages, children, jobs, careers, relationships, everything they decide has value.

But like so much else, it is for them. Not me. I let them down. I failed. Which as we all know leads down a short severe path to I am not enough, I am a failure.

I sat on that bench, watching the sun go down. But here’s the thing; that familiar path never came. I was heartbroken, I made a mistake (and I hope I don’t make it again), we lost, and I expected the emotional wreckage to wash over me like it had for so many years. It didn’t.

Yep. I made a mistake. Losing stinks, especially to that team. And now what?

It’s not every day we see such clear mile markers that show us where we are, so when they come, we have to pay attention. We may not be where we’re going yet, but we’re not where we were and that is a big deal that needs to be noticed and appreciated. That night, after seeing the marker of who and where I am, how far I have come from that sad broken boy I was, I stood up, fully present and fully grateful. Then I went straight home, kissed the Angel and slept peacefully.

Brown M&Ms

I post and talk a lot about showing up; to anything, work, relationships, baseball practice, the gym, church, mostly just showing up to our lives. This is the most important thing, and it can also be the heaviest, most intimidating step. Every body of water is deep and scary before we jump in (then sometimes it IS super deep and scary, but others are only up to our knees and we wonder why we didn’t do it sooner.) So, yes, we show up because we’ve been given a gift and we’re worth it.

But what I want to talk about today, though, is how we show up.

There’s a verse in 1 Kings (6:7): “In building the temple, only blocks dressed at the quarry were used, and no hammer, chisel or any other iron tool was heard at the temple site while it was being built.”

This is a relatively innocuous verse, easily missed, except for possibly to say, “who cares?” Right? Why do we care where the blocks were “dressed,” or if anything was heard (my translation says, “the entire structure was built without the sound of hammer, ax, or any other iron tool at the building site”) during it’s construction? Mostly, we don’t.

Unless there’s something else here.

I heard a story once about the band Van Halen. A contract rider is a list of demands by the artist or band for the venue/promoter. Van Halen stipulated that they have a bowl of M&Ms WITH ALL OF THE BROWN ONES REMOVED, or the entire show would be forfeited at full price. This sounds like egos running wild, simple garden variety arrogance, and it made me really dislike them for quite a while. I don’t anymore. See, the point is that the venue read the rider. Van Halen wanted tons and tons of bells and whistles, it was the “most sophisticated stage setup” at the time and most places were too old & outdated to comply. This would at the very least compromise the band’s vision and possibly create a safety issue. So they would look at the bowl of M&Ms ad if they saw brown, they would know the venue didn’t bother, and if they didn’t bother here, they wouldn’t bother in other areas.

The brown M&Ms didn’t matter, they all taste the same, and the sound doesn’t really matter here. These aren’t instruction plans, directions for building our own churches in 2022. It illustrates us the importance of demonstrating care, concern, honor and respect for God and His temple. It’s like saying, good, now that we’ve shown up, we can talk about if it matters how we show up. And it does.

If I sit down to dinner with you with my phone out on the table, volume up, watching the door, thinking about what else I have to do, totally absent except for my physical body, it shows a decided lack of care and honor for our meal, our time, our relationship. (Of course there are times where exceptions exist, and just showing up in the middle of a tsunami of responsibilities and chaos is the peak of care and honor for our relationship.) Showing up becomes just the last in a string of moves in preparation.

I guess the verse asks the question, are we demonstrating care, concern, honor and respect for God and His temple? (Maybe here’s a great time to be reminded that what “His temple” has changed, no longer a building and instead refers to His people – you & me & the guy who cut us off in traffic & the snotty worker at the grocery store & …) So, are we? How are we showing up to Our Creator? How about to the ‘temples’ in our lives? Are we dressing the blocks at the quarry, whatever dressing means? Are we removing the brown M&Ms?

Trees Of Life

I have been feeling really awesome for quite a while. Physically strong and healthy, emotionally connected and healthy, spiritually inspired and healthy. So, why do I sometimes feel like dirty dish water? My normal resting reality is highly sensitive, particularly susceptible to the pain, joy, anger, wonder around me in others, anywhere. This is nothing new. In fact, it’s a bright shiny key that I am right where I have been created to be, that my heart is fully functioning. In this space, I am me and I happen to like that me very much.

But this dirty dish water business is a nagging splinter in my soul, unconnected to a particular person or circumstance. It’s more like a tinted lens that dims and dulls the surrounding world. On Sundays I often speak of a heaviness and sometimes that’s specific, but other times it’s this pall over us all and I haven’t clarified simply because I couldn’t. I didn’t know where it was coming from or what was causing it, just that it was there.

I think I do, though, now.

Proverbs 18:21: Death and life are in the power of the tongue. Proverbs 15:4: Perverseness in [the tongue] breaks the spirit. Proverbs 12:18: Rash words are like sword thrusts. James 3:8: The tongue…is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.

This weight absolutely feels like so many sword thrusts, an overwhelming air full of poison resulting in what feels like the death of our communal soul. If you would ask me 2 days ago, I’d at some point use the words “broken” and “spirit.”

I can’t believe I didn’t see it sooner. If you listen (and I highly recommend you do), you’ll hear a cacophony of sharp words full of razor blades and acid. In schools, kids, coaches and teachers speak only in terms of “not” – as in what we are all not: what we are not doing, not doing enough of, or not doing well enough. The implication is that we are not, defined primarily by a lack or deficiency. No matter the laughing tone or the nasty smile on the mouth that speaks, these are not jokes, not funny in the least. And far more destructive than we could ever have imagined.

And like the endless McDonald’s ads subconsciously convincing us that we neeeeed that hamburger, these messages when they are uncontested become truth. (By the way, McDonald’s hamburgers are nothing we neeeeed;)

This glut of information wounds us so deeply, filling us with anger and inadequacy, of course the darkness will come out of our own mouths, too.

Last night I left my weight room dragging my heartache. On one hand, “We love each other,” and then sports teams and insecurity fill the air with the polar opposite.

(You know there’s a study about a scientist talking to crystals – maybe I’ll tell you next time.)

So I left and stopped at the grocery store. The cashier told me I should “go to another aisle,” where there was a line. I said I’d just take my things back and she said “ok, whatever.” This isn’t awesome and when I got in the car, in front of my boys (IN FRONT OF MY BOYS!!!!!!), I described this interaction using precisely the same words & spirit of which I have been force-fed. In front of my boys…

We’re supposed to be telling a different story, speaking fresh words, rebelling against the hail of razor blades dipped in acid. And if we’re not careful, we’re no longer salt and light. We’re just more actors in the same old tragedy.

The cool thing is that was yesterday. It’s been the last couple of months, years, millennia. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to be that way tomorrow. Each of the verses I quoted earlier had a 2nd part – one was “a gentle tongue is a tree of life.” A Tree Of Life sounds perfect.

So now what?

Ephesians 4:29 says, “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.”

And in our favorite, Philippians 4:8, “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

Maybe we just need to be a lot more aggressive in our building, a million times more audacious in giving grace. Maybe in our positivity, our pure, lovely, excellent thoughts, and praise, we can all become Trees that fill each other not with old dishwater, but with beautifully clear spring waters Of Life.

Where It Leads

On the mini earlier today, we began to tie the clouds of our lives together. It’s like that scene in The Karate Kid. After Daniel-san has been painting fences & houses, sanding the floor, and waxing on and off for who knows how long (it’s about 15 or 20 minutes of the movie), he begins to pout. Well, he doesn’t just begin to pout here, he begins to pout about this here. He pouts often in the movie. Probably, Daniel Larusso is the most unlikeable hero we’ve ever seen. Anyway. Mr Miyagi miracles the soreness out of his shoulders and unleashes a barrage of punches and kicks that Daniel-san expertly blocks with his surprising new ability. Given connection, context and application, the isolated moves have become skill and talent and will eventually win him the All Valley Karate Tournament and Elizabeth Shue.

We’ve been talking about weight, values, showing up, effort, energy, time, choice, quality, quantity, intention – and when Jen spoke this weekend, saying “Garbage In Garbage Out,” (she was talking about input to our hearts, but later the words themselves met me in a space where I was receiving so much stimulation from all directions) everything coalesced into a nice fiery ball of awareness for me.

What we give (the quantity and, even more so, the quality) can directly inform what we get and how we experience our surroundings and circumstances. If I pour in the very best of me to my relationship with God, my marriage, community, children, career, fitness, friendships, on and on (wherever I choose to spend my time & energy) the chances go up exponentially that whatever it is will be positive and fulfilling. If I don’t, it won’t.

(Now of course, it’s not 100%. If we’ve learned anything at all, it’s that we are not the ones who are in control, right? This is not our story.)

I have a very good friend with whom I used to spend an awful lot of time, we were tight and deeply connected. Then we stopped attending the same church community, didn’t see each other as much, the tight, deep connection loosened and now, though we still care for each other, the friendship is largely superficial. You get what you put in.

If I stay up late Friday night, eat a bunch of junk food, and wake up late Saturday morning, when I log in to the retreat I am tired and uncomfortable, and where I usually find the retreats very meaningful, this time it happens and leaves me unaffected. Garbage in garbage out.

Now, the million dollar question is, how do I know where to choose to give my time & energy? How do I decide what to give?

This is where the hard work we’ve been doing on weight comes back to reward us. We’ve been praying, relying on the guidance of the Holy Spirit to discover our values. We explore what we think is important to us and examine if it actually is. This revelation of our hearts is painstaking but vital, and now we know why. We give our time & energy to what weighs more, we give the best of us to the most valuable.

If we don’t know where to focus, we’ll just give more and more pieces of us to everything. We respond to all of the personal emails, forwards, ads, and spam in our inboxes, unable to tell the difference. We’ll feel drained and used and confused as to why our relationships suffer, why our work suffers, why we don’t feel inspired, why we’re tired all the time, distracted, bored.

If we do, and don’t act on it, we can become angry and/or resentful because we aren’t doing the things that give us life, that we are made to do, that mean something to us. We’ll feel drained and used, our relationships will suffer, our work will suffer, we’ll feel tired, uninspired, distracted, bored, but this time, we know why and that makes us disappointed in ourselves.

The idea is that we listen and follow the Spirit into the depths of our souls, start to find out who we are and for what we’ve been created and called, then step (however lightly at first) onto that path, show up and give everything we have, and see where it leads. I bet it leads somewhere awesome, miles from where we thought we would be.

If & How

I have been thinking of taking a break from writing these posts. There are lots of reasons for this, the most compelling is that I am working on a new book and it’s call is getting louder and louder. I started working on it (the title is “Be Very Careful Who You Marry,” after a fantastic pearl of wisdom from my dad) months and months ago, and I sometimes let weeks go by without adding even a word. Life also gets quite busy and trying to do everything usually means the quality of that everything you’re trying to do decreases drastically, and that is something I can not abide. So, if something has to go, I’ve been thinking it would be this.

Then today, as I was cleaning up my emails, I saw one I wrote to myself late at night. It simply said, “I get to choose every day how I show up.” I don’t remember the context, if I saw it on Instagram or heard it in my own head, but today as I was scribbling it into my small leather bound notebook (a gift from my sister) to remember, it reminded me of this space.

It’s certainly true. First, we get to choose IF we show up. This is always, obviously, step 1. How can it be any other way?

But then, we choose HOW. Are we there physically, but not emotionally? Are we distracted, prisoners to the past or the future? Are we resentful and bitter about having to show up, as if we were forced to attend, victims?

OR are we engaged, interested, enthusiastic, connected?

This requires a great deal of work to decide what we will show up for, but once we do, we decide our own level of fulfillment. We decide what’s important, THEN what we will bring to the table, and finally, what we will receive from that same table.

I think this space is important. Whether anyone reads what I post here is a question for another day. Or maybe it’s not. Whether anyone reads what I post here has absolutely no bearing on my decision to do it or not. Our individual offerings are a sacred gift, this is one of mine, and sure, it is a gift to you, but more than that, it is a gift (a response) to the One who has given so generously to me. I can only give; how it is received is completely out of my control.

So, I decided a long time ago that this space is important. Maybe that will change, but until it does, I will show up and give you my heart, body, soul and mind, and how I will do it is fully present and aware that this is a gift, an offering.

Now that I think about it, that’s how I want to show up to every single thing I am blessed enough to experience.

I’ll write my book, too, and the first page will say “to my dad. thanks.’

15 Seconds

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My good friend (and extraordinarily talented author) Cyn Morgan writes in her book, Misericorde (which you can and should get on Amazon): “May we show our thankfulness through kindness and appreciate our blessings through generosity.”

I love that line, think it’s the perfect answer to the question we are always exploring: “Now what?” God created us, rescued/rescues us, accepts us, loves us without & beyond reason…now what? Well, Morgan is saying, now this. So, it’s awesome and I reference it often.

But in addition to an eloquent image of hope and beauty in practice, I suppose it also speaks to and defines the problem, doesn’t it? Kindness and generosity are in such short supply because thankfulness and appreciation are in such short supply.

I once read that a negative comment leaves an imprint on our psyche immediately, while a positive one requires 15 seconds. I don’t actually know if it is a scientific fact that you would find in journals and textbooks, but to be completely honest with you, I don’t care. I believe it, because it is absolutely true. We all believe it. It’s why 30 of “I like your new haircut” are forgotten after 1 thoughtless jab. Of course, we know the rude words of trolls only serve to display their wounded heart and insecurities, but that knowledge is utterly useless as we play and replay, feeling the hurt over and over. The haircut isn’t the point anymore, our worth and value are.

We don’t take the 15 seconds and let the lovely, the pure, the excellent and praiseworthy crowd out the trash. And there’s a lot of trash right now. Who could appreciate or be thankful for trash? Where are the blessings in that?

Another problem is that we live in a transactional economy. Nothing is for free, right? “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” Receiving gifts, blessings, compliments with nothing in return is nearly impossible for us. It’s why I say, “you’ll have to come to my house next time,” or “I’ll pick up the check next time.” It’s why you get that knot in your stomach if someone gives you a Christmas gift and you don’t have one for them.

Now, what does this mean when it comes to God, grace, or salvation? I’ll tell you, it means entire systems of Jesus-plus religions that are wholly focused on sin management. Whole life games of chutes & ladders. Altars dedicated to the Should. Our spirituality becomes office buildings with door-keepers evaluating our work, grading our adherence to the great checklist in the sky. What we get isn’t a blessing, it’s compensation for a job well done or punishment for a job not so well done.

So, Tuesday, my revolution was to be thankful. (1 day – or small moments inside of 1 day – was more than enough of a beginning. That step was like going from 0 to a million.) My rebellion was to ignore the chains I usually carry on my shoulders around my neck that keep nagging me to prove my worth, and just bathe in the blessings of grace & love that have been poured on my life. For 15 seconds. Each. And it was wonderful. Like everything else, it was so much better than I could’ve imagined.

Let’s start with a paraphrase of only half of Morgan’s quote: “May we [be] thankful and appreciate our blessings [for 15 seconds at a time],” and then from there, who knows what’s possible????

Some News For You

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I have a few stories to tell, then some news for you.

First, Jesus gave this “Great Commission” (in Matthew 28:18-20): “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Maybe today we need to know that He is “surely” with us always; interesting how comforting and safe a commission, a command is with this lovely Jesus. But it’s that word “go” that we’ll talk about now. I’ve heard it translated more accurately as “As you are going,” and that makes a difference. It’s not an addition, not something else, not a demand to try and find room to scribble something “spiritual” on an overflowing calendar. It is an invitation to transform what we are already doing, where we are already going. It is an invitation to acknowledge that this space and interaction is sacred, and treat it accordingly…as we are going.

2. In high school, the head football coach, Phil Kauffman, reached out to me (a soft, round, insecure, sad young man who was struggling to stay alive, blind to any gifts or talents I might possess). Mr Kauffman offered to open the weight room and show some important, compound movements and proper form. I was not a football player, he had no reason to do this. I wasn’t even a student of his any longer. He had absolutely no reason to do this.

And C. In November, my wife the Angel opened my eyes to a new weight room position at the local high school in the district where she works. I filled out the application and was given an interview. Honestly, the hours were pretty inconvenient, the pay was not exactly going to push me into the next tax bracket. As far as jobs go, it wasn’t ideal. And as long as we’re being honest, there wasn’t any sensible reason to do this.

So. I accepted that position, I’ll start in February (given that the Superintendent and School board approves me.) That’s the news, brothers and sisters.

There are certain times in your life where you are given the opportunity to discover if the faith you say you have is the same as the one you actually have, in real life. It’s easy to say any number of things, right? But every so often, you get to find out if you truly believe the words that fall out of your mouth, if they are theory or practice. This is a little bit like Christmas morning, unwrapping the paper, hoping for the best inside.

I believe we change the world “as we are going.” I believe Mr. Kauffman changed my life forever – through lifting weights, sure, but more importantly by showing me that I held some value that I couldn’t see, that I was worth his time simply for no earthly reason other than that I was. I believe the words and actions of beautiful people at certain times can create entire worlds that were impossible before. I believe that Jesus saved us, and saves us, and with every breath we get to respond to that overwhelming love.

A living faith with feet and hands that spots your bench press is far more valuable than a bloated paycheck and convenient hours.

Maybe I’ll have this position until the end of the school year, or until I’m 105. Maybe the board will say “No, thank you.” Maybe I can be Phil Kauffman to someone, too. I don’t have any control over any of those things. What I do have some control over is the bricks that I’m using to intentionally build my life, bricks that are held and stacked with tremendous gratitude.

Fighting

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I am sitting at my dining room table. This is unusual because I usually sit in the living room in a super-soft and cozy reclining chair that was given to me. I’m here because we have a fish tank in here, so I’m facing that direction watching the colors of the light fade into one other, wanting to write this post but having NO IDEA what to write. Incidentally, there aren’t any fish in this tank. Just 2 snails.

Staring at the tank, through the water, I can see a 4×6 index card I have on my mirror. I have 2. 1 has a quote from a Mark Steele book, Half-Life/Die Already I think: “I don’t know what’s coming. But I know it will not be too much.” The one I’m interested in today has a Bible verse, Nehemiah 4:14 (I mistakenly wrote 5:14): “Remember the LORD, who is great and awesome, and fight for your friends, your family, and your homes.” On my mind this morning – and last night as I lay awake, unable to sleep – is the fight I had with my boys and it’s consequences.

I don’t care what the fight was about, to tell you the truth, except to remember that they lost their video games for 2 days (!!??!!) and to follow through on that ban.

What happened afterwards is what I care about. I live my life in such a way that, if you and I have a disagreement, no matter how heated it may get, when it’s over, it’s over. You see, when I was growing up, I had a dad who would withhold himself from me in anger and/or disappointment. There would be days and weeks where he would silently ignore me until he didn’t, and then we could go back to normal. It was crushing and never failed to thoroughly break my heart. So, in all of my other relationships, I promised that we would never so carelessly waste precious moments like that. Early in our marriage, Angel and I would argue and she would attempt to escape to…well, who knows why she would try to escape? Possibly to stop the escalating tension and gather thoughts, a count-to-10 situation. But what I do know is that those attempts would be unsuccessful. Because my dad did this kind of thing and we are waaaaay too important to miss. We are such valuable gifts. He was, too, (especially to me), but I didn’t have a say then. Now I do. So we would fight and then the fights would be over and we could hold each other’s hands and give each other smooches again.

Yesterday, the boys got in trouble and, minutes later, I wanted to show something to Samuel. Whatever it was was cool and interesting, I’m sure, but that something was also to display that we were still in love. It has recently been pointed out to me that I stand in certain places and move in certain ways as to initiate physical contact. Probably, that’s true. AND HE MOVED AWAY FROM ME, just an inch or 2, just enough so we were not touching.

He was mad or sulking or whatever and wanted to wound me, and he did. But at what cost? I’ve been teaching one thing their whole lives; that we do not withhold ourselves from others to manipulate or control. Well, 2 things; that we can argue and that’s ok – our love is unconditional.

Now, I’m mad and sulking and whatever. Mostly sad. I’ve failed as a parent blah blah blah. That my dad is gone and I miss him like crazy, and now my boys and I are going to miss each other forever. You know how these thoughts pile up, like a terrible avalanche of sadness and loss.

And here’s Nehemiah. What does it mean to fight for my friends, my family, and my home? Sigh. I guess it means to take my tears and wounded-ness and plow through his rebellion. Because he’s 14 and I’m right – this is not always the case, but in this one, it FOR SURE is. We are waaaaay too important, and some things are worth fighting for. I may have to chase him around like I did (and sometimes do) with my wife, but this story is going to end with big bear hugs and a tidal wave of smooches on his cheeks that he only pretends to hate.

I didn’t know what it meant to fight for my dad and those sweet moments that were gone too soon, but maybe in fighting for these, now, we are all fighting to reclaim those, too.