Coming to Fullness In The Love Of A Father

                                                      Photo by Jude Beck on Unsplash 

I have father wounds. Welcome to the human race, right? Of God calling Himself father Donald Miller says, “This, in light of the earthly representation of the role, seems a marketing mistake.” So went my childhood. Words spoken in haste. Doors kicked in rage. Hugs never given. Most of all the being away. My father’s issues were birthed in the present but conceived in the past. God is a loving father. To learn this has taken so long because unlearning is a huge part of the process.

Dads’ parents modeled dysfunction. Dad bought it but never owned it. So it was passed down again. The cycle continues or is broken. Faltering, falling flat; I’m a prodigal healed in the hug of the Everlasting father. 

Some of us wrestle to resist the hard wiring we come by. Can we flee pedigree? We want to be like our dad, or we don’t. In a sudden moment we realize it; we’ve responded like dad. This is both blessing and curse. For there are good dads and bad dads and a bunch of in-between. 

Did we get dad’s approval? Our father and the image of our father dictate who we become and who we fight against becoming. A father tells a son he is lazy; he grows up a workaholic. We can spend an entire life trying to please our father; even after he’s buried. The story of the prodigal resonates for a reason. Not because of the return of the son but because of the embrace of the father.

I go whoring and sew seed, running farther and farther from the father. Finding only hunger I come home. Expecting condemnation. Father has prepared a feast; killing the fatted calf. He absorbs the loss I squander. He delights in me; wrapping me up in His hug.  My Father is a safe place; I am sheltered, shielded, secure.

I can come to fullness in the acceptance of a loving (and perfect) father. I am not cowering. He is positively provoking me to be my best. This kind of fatherly love encourages a radical freedom. Even in light of personal failure. This is what I am learning. I hesitate to buy into my image of an earthly father. Conversely the heavenly image of father has me hungering for more of his image in me.

Loss And Overcoming: Rethinking Story

I’m reconsidering what it means to live a good story.  Dream and fame; couch and comfort, a nice city in a picketed community---the image in my head.  I’m on this road now where I’m paying attention to different stories.  A married couple in their twenties face the wife’s massive brain stem stroke; a popular preacher faces the death of a five-year-old daughter from sudden asthma attack (one day here, next day gone); the teen dives into shallow water leaving her a quadriplegic.  The good story isn’t in the loss.  The good story is in the overcoming.

I don’t know if it’s the age I’m at or the age I’m living in but all around me people are facing difficult personal trials.  Friends with cancer, parents with cancer and children with cancer startle me at every turn.  I can easily name friends that live in pain from the moment their feet hit the floor in the morning until their muscles settle down under the sheets at night.  On top of that friends face income issues and aging parent issues.  All of these bring with them unique battles for spiritual perspective; prayers for peace in the midst of soul-shaking storms.  Some simply endure while others pursue the best of stories in less than perfect circumstances.

Life is a process of re-calibrating.  I just reviewed some previous blog posts.  There is a honing and sharpening of my perspective and my direction; sharpening the point of life while it pushes in to sharpen me.  I say sharpen but life pushes in with tremendous pressure.  God does whatever sharpening He wants.  I try to submit and learn.

Good story isn’t the perfect life.  It’s the unexpected kidney punch life gives.  It’s how the hero deals with the unforeseen circumstances—character forged in the journey.  Finally, it’s God’s grace we see in the overcoming.  As MercyMe sings; “like a hero who takes the stage when we're on the edge of our seats saying it's too late, well let me introduce you to grace, grace God's grace.”

Normal Vs. Radical Lifestyle: Battles of A Normal Guy

They have cradled you in custom, they have primed you with their preaching,

They have soaked you in convention through and through;

They have put you in a showcase; you’re a credit to their teaching---

But can’t you hear the Wild---it’s calling you.

---Robert Service

I live in tension.  On one end I spend my days as the normal guy.  I go to work, enjoy my wife, delight in my daughter; pay bills, workout, go to church and try to accomplish my short list of goals.  Pushing against this everyday life is the challenge to live a radically good story.  I am not alone in this.  Sometimes I feel I go it alone.

Partly it’s the voices I struggle against.  I say these things to myself and accept them as truth.  What if they are lies?  I look at writers like Donald Miller and Stephen Pressfield and the voice says, “They are brilliant.  They are geniuses.  You are ‘a bear of little brain’ just like Winnie the Pooh.  Those writers are crazy and committed---or should be.  Myself, I am just a normal guy.  And what normal guys do is work hard, be good, play on weekends, make it to retirement then die.

I’m so freakin tired.  No wonder we live for our days off?  We drive to work and drive home; fight the traffic, schlep the children, catch a sit-com, kiss the wife and hit the pillow.  I want to find the energy to keep swimming upstream.  The vision stays alive but its ember and needs oxygen. 

Oxygen is difficult to find.  Yet we are wired to breathe it, wired not to settle for the air down here.  We are wired for more.  Settle into the Barcalounger and we die.  There’s that tension.  We are not content with status quo.  What’s the answer?

The Mind-Feelings Connection

There was tightness in his chest, adrenaline pouring into his bloodstream and his mind recognized only that his body was revving up with no place for it to go.  He leaned up against a wall and forced himself—first to breathe then to breathe deeply.  He felt rivulets of sweat roll down his sides.  Fear and anxiety can do that to you. 

I realized this week that I have some irrational fears.  One of my fears when charted would look like this: Trials happen to everybody, we grow through difficulty, life is going along to well now so the shoe is about to drop and a big horrible event is coming.  Stupid, right?  This thinking, at a very low frequency, robs me of my joy. My feelings intermesh with my thinking. 

In her book, Finding Your Own North Star, Martha Beck writes, “The unconscious portion of the human mind communicates through symbolism when it creates dreams, language, and every form of art.  It can also express itself symbolically by acting its messages out with the body.” Donald Miller in his blog post, “Why IDon’t Go To Church Very Often,” says of the mind-feelings connection, “Before we get too irate and have a trigger reaction against the idea feelings are actually valid if verified and tested, we should consider new revelations in brain science, learning-style revelations and basic psychology. What about intuition, what about the whole brain? What about Daniel Goleman’s work on emotional intelligence? What about Sir Ken Robinson’s work on education reform? What about Jung’s early work on personality theory and motives? And even Malcolm Gladwell’s work on thinking without thinking? “ 

Two times I remember having massive anxiety; one entailed quitting my job and switching to a new employer and the second was before my first marriage.  Both instances ended badly.  I suspect there may have been an interaction between my feelings and my mind which I should have explored further. 

In the ancient book of Esther God uses the insomnia of a king (Esther 6:1) to change the course of a nation.  Perhaps our feelings when awakened are in place to awaken and arouse us as well.  If only we do the hard work of introspection and prayer to discern what’s going on in our hearts.

A Better Story For 2014

H/t to James Clear for the format for this post….


The goal in development this last year is taken from Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: the idea is to edit my life into a great story. In reviewing the past year and concurrently setting goals for 2014 the significant questions are:

1. What was accomplished in 2013 that makes for (or leads to) a good story? What went well?
2. What chapters would I leave when I looked at 2013?
3. What accomplishments will be additional good chapters for 2014?

Chapters In A Good Story

Writing: This was my 2nd year of consistent blogging and page views increased significantly! Though I can not measure it I feel that my writing is more concise and my personal editing is better than previous years.

Travel: Mrs. Dillo and I stepped out of our comfort zone and flew into Guatemala. We spent nine days with missionaries that we’d never met. We went into small villages and were embraced by God fearing Mayan’s. Mrs. Dillo ran vision clinics and I helped with construction—both areas skirting the line between comfort zone and total lack of skill/experience zone. The family visited the Sequoia’s and San Diego. As a couple we took a trip to Temecula and toured the wine country.

Cycling: I Participated in a number of rides including The Mile High Century, a 105 mile ride in Lake Almanor, California. It was great to accomplish a ride of this distance but my overall time to complete the ride was slow and disappointing.

Spiritual: Our annual men’s retreat took place in November. By default I ended up point-man on the planning committee; not a goal accomplished but an achievement. During said retreat I was challenged to pray consistently. For half of November and all of December I stopped on the way home from work, read Psalms and prayed. The result has been dynamic in both my attitude and through God’s responding.

I led a number of men’s Bible studies; Ephesians, Galatians and two sessions on forgiveness.

Finished reading The Gulag Archipelago.

What Didn’t Go Well

Spiritual: I attempted to read through the Bible in a year and I’ve read through a small chunk of the Old Testament. Prayer and reading were inconsistent at best.

Bicycling: Didn’t train well for the level of rides I did. Speed training non-existent. Not certain how hard I want to push and train in cycling this year.

Employment: Work is still a struggle. I had plans to research what’ out there and work toward making changes. None of that happened. In the current economy I think I’ll stick it out and wait to hear from God before making a move.

Finances: Still a catastrophe in 2013. The wonderful wife’s perseverance finally paid off and she landed the desired position. This should help getting us back on even keel in 14.

Good Chapters for 2014

Writing: I will resume blogging three times a week. The desire is to push myself with different styles and be willing to risk more. This means some blog posts will be edgier than some may appreciate---the joy of honing the skill will be worth the risk.

Nanorimo: November is National Novel Writing Month so I will be writing a novel.

Photography: My desire is to reacquaint myself with my camera. I am reading some excellent books on lighting and exposure. The challenge will be to find the time and place to shoot more with life and schedule already full.

Spiritual: I will continue to stop and pray on my way home. Will start a journal of prayer requests and answers.

Travel/Training: Beyond the usual summer trips we are committed to attend the Storyline conference this year and work through long range life planning.

Finances: Will pay off THE credit card.

In broad brush strokes those are the main goals (I’ve purposely left off family oriented goals such as time with wife and child) for this year. The hope is that God will reward as He is sought for “without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.” May the reward be a life and a story that is worth the telling.

Goal Setting Strategies for 2014

I tend to see goal-setting like Clint Eastwood in a western; one man, one gun and one goal (one gal as well but that’s beside the point). The War of Art is a book I consider a must-read but it too tends to eschew the view that pursuing a goal is a one man enterprise. There is some of that but effective incentives and processes are more complex.


To set goals you can put it all out there as James Clear does in his 2013 Annual Review in which he evaluates the past year; what went well, what didn’t and related goals for 2014. This is the wrong thing to do---according to a post on Donald Miller’s Storyline Blog titled, “Don’t Share Your Resolutions.” I understand that sharing my goals robs them of energy. What energizes me is completely different.

Miller recommends you don’t share your resolutions but promotes personal coaching as a means to accomplishing your goals. I am an extrovert—which means I gain energy from interacting with others. Setting my goals and having others come alongside to encourage and challenge me in accountability consistently aides in my progress in multiple areas. While I won’t be hiring my own personal coach I will be enlisting others to assist me in my pursuits.

Each strategy to accomplish one’s goals incorporates some level of being energized and pushed toward achieving your specific outcome. The authors of Bicycling magazine (January/February 2014), in talking about weight loss goals, note a strategy called “incentive-based weight loss.” The idea need not apply to weight loss but can apply to any goal---“many people who struggle to get leaner can succeed by pursuing short-term gratification. So…give yourself a decadent cycling vacation or cash bonus if you hit a weight loss goal.” Set your goal and treat yourself when it’s accomplished.

My first goal of the year is to lay out my basic goals similar to the post by James Clear. I’ll have those up on Tuesday. That’ll help me get this year kick started—my hope is that you’ll be helped along the way as well.

Vinyl Connections

  

In the days before Google when everyone owned ‘vinyl’ we did this by reading the artist notes and the fine print. You would pick up the jacket of your favorite artist’s record. You would flip it over to the backside and locate the musicians that accompanied or contributed to the album. Then because YouTube and ITunes didn’t exist you would buy the album of the accompanying artist. Often this would lead to the discovery of new favorites.

Back in the eighties I was a fan of a singer named Steve Taylor. His lyrics were Christian but sarcastic. So much so that initially he couldn’t get either secular nor religious record labels to back him because “your lyrics will offend our audience.” His music remained controversial throughout his recording career simply because he often bucked the status quo. That being the case he went on to garner significant awards in music. He was edgy which is why I enjoyed him. He fell off my radar since then. I thought of him because I’d quoted his lyrics to a friend.

I am a fan of Donald Miller the author of Blue Like Jazz and A Million Miles In A Thousand Years. Donald Miller, like Steve Taylor, is a controversial and popular Christian writer. He doesn’t fit into the safe normative Christian author mold. Blue Like Jazz was recently made into a movie. The reason that it was made into a movie was that Donald Miller was approached to make it into a movie. The guy that called Miller owned a movie company and made movies. Miller says this about him, “I realized that I’d heard of Steve before. He used to be in a rock band and when I was a kid I had one of their records.” It wasn’t until today when I Googled Steve Taylor that I made the connection.

After he ended his career as a rock musician Taylor continued writing and producing music with such groups as The Newsboys and Sixpence None The Richer. In 2010 he began collaborating on the movie Blue Like Jazz. In that intersect two of my favorite artists came together to create a movie that, like all their previous work, was outside the normative Christian box.

As in the days when ‘vinyl’ was king there remains a great happiness in discovering new artists that connect music and ideas to enhance and motivate. There is that joy of discovery and serendipity when the connection comes together. Today I was jazzed to discover the Taylor-Miller connection.

Quote of the Month-Blue Like Jazz

"We would eat chocolates and smoke cigarettes and read the Bible, which is the only way to do it, if you ask me. Don, the Bible is so good with chocolate. I always thought the Bible was more of a salad thing, you know, but it isn't. It's a chocolate thing."