Pessimism-The Tension We Live In

I see the glass as half-full—until a catastrophe hurls it sideways. As a child I read a self-help book which advised to always expect the worse and you’d never be disappointed. Ah, the lies that seep into our minds over a lifetime. As I write sunlight streams into my window, I sip black coffee from a favorite mug and listen to soul-stirring music. I sigh…this is good. Enjoying the quiet I rise to get another cup. The phone rings, it’s the ex-wife with questions about finances and child scheduling. Silence shattered, the tension we live in.

For me it was Hillary Tower; the first infatuation, the first heartbreak. I was six, she some years older, maybe eleven or twelve. Spring and summer we did gymnastics on her front lawn, ring-around-the-Rosie, skipping and laughing. Then one day she was gone. No note, no goodbye, no warning. I remember standing in the kitchen as my mother told me Hillary was gone.

I’m certain you’ve noticed the change in my Facebook status to ‘in a relationship.’ Friendship in any form is miraculous. Let’s face it-we are quirky, selfish, scarred and scared beings. When God brings another human being into the journey with us it is an amazing gift. When that gift comes into our lives through the opposite sex we brush Eden. We know Eden didn’t stay perfect for long. That is the core of my angst.

I am a man of flesh and bone. I trust my experience; I remember all the Hillary Tower episodes in my life. I look at the glass, and the catastrophe, and forget Him who holds the glass aright, Him who drives the storm.

“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” says the writer of Hebrews. We spend a lifetime learning lies and longer knocking them down with truth. Yes life sucks and evil reigns. Yet God is able to do ‘far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think…” It is to God I must look to keep from getting bogged down in my pessimism. That is the tension we live in.

The Room

The dry heaves subside quickly. I splash cold water on my face and brush my teeth. Lock up the house and crank the ignition in the car. Pop in some minty-fresh gum. This is not going to be a good day.

The walk from the parking lot into the facility happens in slow-motion; only my thoughts are racing. I pull open the glass doors, heavy, difficult to open, making escape difficult. Sign my name feeling out of place in shorts and tee shirt.

Down the hallway, not chemically clean, smells assault nose and mouth; urine and sweet sick smells which my brain can’t catalogue. Try not to look into the rooms as I pass by, “Doctor my eyes have seen the years and the slow parade of fears…without crying.”

Demons and darkness mingle with deaths’ odor, breathing is a struggle. I hesitate to enter the room. Dragons less an enemy than the black void I must step into.

I cross the threshold; embittered emotions from childhood veil me in. I flail about, drowning in a pool, unable to firmly grasp anything. Soul deep I feel nothing—unsure of myself because nobody’s ever met me there. No voice to give direction, no arms to lift me up. The boy becomes teenager and runs into different arms for feeling, touch and strokes.

Another step forward another deep breath. Attune my ears to a different voice. A Voice that spoke while I drowned, calling directions, giving guidance, reaching into the darkness, affirming worth, confirming value.

I listen to that Voice now, cast myself into those arms. Raise my hands to do battle. Sweat breaks on my forehead; I recall a man without soul, a manipulator of people; hiding emptiness with a smile.

A choice I must make---we must make. Does my past own me? Am I beholden to darkness?

I step into the room and greet my father. He barely responds. I pray over him. I pray to the Father that frees from darkness, demons and guilt. I kiss my father and embrace the day with all it brings.

H/t to GB for help with the creative process

A Time For Every Purpose

Meteor fire lit up the sky, and we spoke of things burned in life’s wreckage.

And there is a time for every event under heaven—

Relationships destroyed by betrayal and boredom, livelihoods lost due to economic downturn, houses sold by short-sale and children seen on weekends.

A time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted. A time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build up.

I told him there was a delightful new woman in my life; he prays for reconciliation—at times-hungers for the arms of a woman.

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance.

Blink and you miss God’s gifts, streaking into your life in a blaze. The workday week brightens as a customer becomes friend also; heart to heart while on the clock. The five a.m. text-the baby’s born via C, and there he is on your cell phone screen.

A time to throw stones, and a time to gather stones;

At a baby shower on Saturday, I asked the dad when the baby was due; he said he wasn’t sure; they’d just changed the date. I’m guessing the mom knows.

Boy leaves the house for college, girl leaves college for the mission field, stones cast, arrows loosed.

a time to embrace and a time to shun embracing.

Dismal stories of broken marriages, I hear them too often-he is bored, he found someone else; they don’t talk, he doesn’t listen.

Lovers, misunderstood, trembling and fearful, come together and fulfill the promise; “How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered.”

“The conclusion, when all has been heard is; fear God and keep his commandments. For God will bring every act to judgement, everything which is hidden whether it is good or evil. "

Neighborhood Beautification

He should have been wearing a trench coat. The knock on the door always jars me. Opening it to see my neighbor I expect the normal request to borrow money. Nope. “Do you do a lot of shopping,” he asks. In response to my confused look he counters, “I have this friend that will sell you forty dollars worth of food stamps for twenty dollars. All the neighbors are partaking.”

Cindy is in good shape for fifty-seven. She waitresses at Carrows. Her garden inspired the planting of my rose bush. She waters her garden in bikini, but sometimes in silk dress; depending on if she wants to dress up. Currently she sleeps in her backyard (her bedroom is being redone.)

Wednesday I came home to find Cindy digging a trench in front of our houses. “You missed it,” she says. “The clouds opened up and poured rain. It was raining and hailing. I’ve never seen hail like that here! Another minute and it would have been running into our houses.” I asked, “How long you lived here?” “Since 1974.” So when she says she’s never seen hail fall like it did in this flood it carries some weight. So we spend the last hours of daylight digging a trench in-case the floods returned.

Sunsets are awesome in the high desert. I step outside to catch the colors in the sky and find ‘Junior,’ the two-year old playing in front of my house, no parents in sight. “Hey dude isn’t that an awesome sunset,” I ask, pointing to the sky. Junior isn’t very articulate. I go on to spend a small chunk of time with the kid chattering on about rocks and colors in the sky. Junior now runs to greet me every time he’s outside.

Junior is a child at risk. His mom is a teenager. He’s being raised by grandma and grandpa-who are maybe forty-years old. All live next door. All four have different colored skin. I gave grandpa James a drive to work and heard more of the story. Grandma had an affair and broke up with James. Subsequently she went to jail, was released, went back to James. The teenager is hers—but I’m not sure she’s his.

Cookie came to my door one night begging me to call 911. We wave to each other now and talk about roses. Since I’ve planted my Ingrid Bergman she has decided to begin planting flowers again.

The coffee-cup saying is to ‘Bloom Where You’re Planted.’ Christ’s words are more sobering, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Time to open that front door and connect with our neighbors. God will supply the means; a call to 911, digging a ditch or raising a rose bush. It’s up to us to reach out and connect beyond that. Then to enjoy the resultant bright blooms our neighborhoods.

Questions, Peace and God

“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

“Christians would share this verse with me about ‘peace that passes understanding,’ but I felt no peace. Laying there in the hospital, I questioned my salvation…” I asked my friend if he ever received that peace. The answer surprised me. “No, I haven’t.” Four years since his car accident and my friend, a mature follower of Christ, hasn’t known peace.

This chunk of conversation rattled me so that I’ve been chewing on it all week. I understand lack of peace. Finances are ever an issue. I look at my bills, eyeball my bank account and walk away overcome with anxiety. Guilt is an issue too. Guilt projected by others, guilt piled on by self-you should visit your dad in the hospital, you should be the perfect parent, you shouldn’t have gotten into this financial situation. The car dying when I couldn’t afford a new one, the marriage ending period; all trials potentially rob us of peace.

Scripturally, peace seems the end result in the process. And it is a process. First fight anxiety by thinking rightly about God. Think rightly about circumstances as well. Having my material ducks in a row allows me peace. Ducks in a row make great targets for Satan and circumstances though. Which ducks did God promise would remain standing? Perfect health? Owning a house? An intact marriage? Peace eludes me, too, when I insist on having things never promised by God in the first place.

Peace is seen as smooth and happy circumstances when it’s often the opposite. We think of it as the lake without ripple, its water like glass. Truly it’s more like the old beer commercial-the bull is running amok in the cafeteria but your table is calm though the bull rages. The internal and external pain may still rage, the questions still persist, peace permeates all.

Peace is derived from the right perspective. We give thanks because all things come from the hand of God. The grappling and the pain, the qualms and the questions God will honor when they are based in scripture and set against His true character. It will never arrive via false facts and fairy tale expectations.

Lasting Friendship

Three months is a long time to a girl of thirteen years. It is a tenuous age and having one close friend by your side a strong security. Times are turbulent and the friend must move where the family goes—where the work is.
“Three months isn’t long,” I say.

My daughter sees not only empty time but perpetual distance saying, “You’d feel badly if Matt moved or you couldn’t talk to Glenn,” alluding to some of my friends. The conversation doesn’t take place in a vacuum. We are driving home from a visit to family of a friend I’ve had since fifth grade. In his kitchen, days earlier, John had noted, “There probably aren’t many folk like us; who’ve been friends since childhood.”

75 % of us have close friends, while 25% of us have no close confidantes, according to a controversial article in the American Social Review (June 2006). “These close bonds of friendship don’t just happen,” I say, “They take work”

What makes for lasting friendships; camaraderie of close confidantes, as opposed to an acquaintance you’ve known for years? How have we built on that initial connectedness?

Thinking through my rich connections two key components are factors in each friendship I have. We make time to talk; phone-to-phone and face-to-face. We take time to construct common experience. In each strong friendship I have I can name hikes and dinners, bike rides and shows, gut busting laughter and spirit breaking tears. In all these things we aggressively take time to touch base.

My daughter’s only begun that rich adventure we call friendship. You’re well into the journey. What’s set your friendships apart from the rest? What would you say to my daughter? En route I’m hoping that my having more than a handful of heart-healing, soul-stirring friendships speaks through these months and into her years.

Picture courtesy of Collection of The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford

Death The Elephant In The Room

The rage percolates and pours out on family and caregiver. Violence hurled at the nurse during the ultrasound, “You poke me with that one time and you’ll be wearing it.” Scarier still that minutes later he said he couldn’t remember the incident. The anger deep inside, spilling out from a soul still in rebellion.

Dad’s in the hospital again. Talk of congestive heart failure and rehabilitation, going home and getting better. We make small talk while he eats his lunch. Death is the elephant in the room.

“What do you want on your tombstone,” the counselor asked. The answer easier now than ten years ago: Lived large, laughed out loud, fought his fears, quit posing and pretending, taught his daughter all the above.

The Preacher wrote, “It is better to go into a house of mourning than into a house of celebration for that is the end of all men; and it causes the living to take notice.” How are you doing at unpacking your pachyderm? What do you want on your tombstone?

The Problem With Prosperity

" I spoke to you in your prosperity; But you said, "I will not listen!"

When cancer comes or the lover leaves it’s God’s fault. When there is food on the table, money in the bank, and health in relationships it’s due to personal discipline and acumen. That’s been my paradigm most of my life. Growing in my knowledge and experience of God I still teetered between two beliefs: 1) God is the giver of all good things 2) Things come my way because I deserve them.

A chunk of my life was spent on cruise control. Got married, had a kid, went to church, went to work, rode the bicycle, hugged the wife, went to sleep. I made time for prayer and bible reading, went to meetings with men and dinners with couples. Funny thing about cruise control, it’s easy to fall asleep at the wheel, to trust in pride, arrogance and the way you’ve always done things.

“God needs to heal this marriage or blow it up,” I choked out over the phone. The threat of restraining order came quickly after. Three weeks of confusion as night after night found me sleeping in hotels. Pride and arrogance weren’t much help.

The marriage blew up. At the end of my rope I was ready to listen. One of the lifelines God threw me happens on Tuesday.

I spend every other Tuesday with a bunch of men. A group of guys that pray like this, “Grant me continued humbling, brokenness and transformation.” Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? “Blessed are the poor in spirit…blessed are those who mourn…the gentle…those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…the merciful…the pure in heart…the peacemakers…” Most of these guys were controlled by demons, drugs and even basketball. Today they count it joy to be controlled by God.

Prosperity isn’t the problem. If it were the book of Job wouldn’t end with God restoring his fortune twofold. The problem is with me. Prosperity allows me to be complacent, money in the bank fools me into thinking I’m good without God. May I remember that Jesus blessed those poor in spirit, but to the man who relied on silos full of grain he said, “You fool! This very night your soul is required of you.”

Photo courtesy of:
George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress).
http://loc.gov/pictures/resource/ggbain.09237/

Preferable

"Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows he carried;
Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten of God, and afflicted."

Bloody, mangled,
Escape through barbed wire,
Gashes preferable,
To His crown of thorns.




Bloated, swollen,
Swimming through jellyfish,
Stings preferable,
To the jagged whip.

Battered, raw,
Crashing through pane of glass,
Clarity preferable,
To soldiers' fists.

Body, broken,
Crucified upon a cross,
Mercy preferable,
To deserved wrath.

Clean Underwear

I did my dishes, made my bed and cleaned the crockery-a months’ worth of cleaning in a day. Leaving town on vacation, nothing like coming home to crisp clean sheets and shiny sinks. That’s the face, the place; I’d like you to see. I’m lying to you. I clean for another reason.

One mustn’t leave the house in dirty underwear. If you die in a car wreck, or a helicopter drops on your head, or you choke on a Clif Bar it’s imperative that you are wearing spotless skivvies. Irrefutable logic it’s not, still it appeals to a maternal archetype.

When the plane plummets into the ocean and I die (the seat cushion as boogie board-good; as flotation device-not so great) I don’t want you to find my house in its usual state of ‘controlled chaos.’ There’s something else I don’t want you to find and I hadn’t even thought about it until one night of live theatre.

The folks at “Mortified” describe themselves as “a comic excavation of the strange and extraordinary things we created as kids. ...Adults sharing their own adolescent journals, letters, poems, lyrics, home movies, stories and more.” Funny stuff and for me, frightening. I’ve kept a journal since high school. You remember high school? Oh, you don’t?

I’d left the place clean but in my closet was a box of journals. When I got home I ripped the box open. Opening to the journal entries for my senior I found entries such as the following:

Thursday Jan. 19: I had a dream. Something with Jude and I fell asleep. I woke up and she was gone. I went to school. I brought my squirt gun.

Friday Feb. 10: Demi is soooo cute.

Monday Feb. 14: I gave Valentines to Judy, Dana, and Cheryl and Demi.

Monday Feb. 20: Keith and I went to meet Barbie and Lynette for brunch.

Wed. March 29: Neca called. Date is all set up for Friday night. Last show ever of Carol Burnett was on. Sob, sob.

Cleaning underwear is easy. Bonfires and Wite-out leave evidence behind.