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June 10, 2016June 9, 2016

The Stories One Family Told Me

As soon as I walked into the house, I could tell everyone was nervous. Polite, but nervous. And maybe a little skeptical. I shook hands with each of the ten people sitting in the dining room and then took a seat at the head of the table. I thanked them for agreeing to meet with me. I thanked them for their bravery.

I spent the next three hours listening to that family: there were two parents, four of their children, and their children’s spouses. They told stories, really difficult stories. Painful stuff. The father, the man sitting right there among them, had been horribly abusive, physically and verbally. He had treated his children, his boys especially, the way no boys should be treated by their father.

But that’s exactly how his own father had treated him, and he knew no different.

They shared their stories, the beatings and the put-downs, the sadness and the hard days. There were good times, too, vacations and Christmases, games and treats. There were the cold winter evenings they sat with their mother in the tiny bathroom (that’s where the heater was), memorizing Bible verses.

There were hard questions.

There was forgiveness sought after desperately, and given freely.

There were a lot of tears.

There was a lot of courage.

I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything like it, a family free to talk about such a painful past, a family that brave to pull back their sleeves and say, “See! These are the scars!” A family so desperate to tell their story, only so that others might hear it and heal, or hope for healing.

The father said something during our time together that I’ll never forget. He said, “Often, a father will see some weakness in his son, a weakness he had when he was a boy, and it’s unbearable to him. He can’t stand to see his own son with the same weakness.”

And I felt that. I see that in myself, the way I interact with my own boys. The moments when I am too hard on them. The times I come down on them. It’s something I won’t soon forget.

Can we share our stories, even our painful ones, in a way that brings hope?

June 9, 2016June 7, 2016

Away We Go

Shadows line the tile and a cool summer
breeze floods through the screens like water
through a broken dam. I can hear
the young men revving their car engines at the red
light on James Street and for a moment
I remember the smell of oil burning, the rush of waiting
for the light to turn. It seems a long
time ago.

They rush into the night, and I count the gears
in my head. First. Second. Third. They leave behind
a steady hum of city silence, which means:
the refrigerator
the neighbor’s air conditioner in the alley
a siren four streets away
and the creak of floors above me as Maile
walks the hall.

Twenty years from now, when my children
are grown, and Maile and I sit
on the porch on a summer night
like this one, what familiar things will the past
use to snag me? Will the cry of a baby in an
apartment across the street remind me of these
sleepless nights? Will a family walking
the sidewalk remind me of our own treks through
the city
for ice cream
or to the park
or to church?
Will a book I read remind me of my
attempts – successful? not? – to publish my own words?

For now I turn off the rest of the lights
and stand a moment longer in the hall on cool
wood floors, the breeze pooling around my feet,
the sound of another car revving at the light. The bass
thumps. Someone shouts. The light
turns.

Away we go.

June 8, 2016June 1, 2016

The Secret Power of Shrimp Vindaloo

On our first return to England from the U.S., we made the mistake of giving in to jet lag. On that particular trip, we arrived at our Wendover home and slept all day, a gorgeous, indulgent, heavy sleep that felt more like drowning. We slept from 10am until 4pm in the afternoon.

But that day of sleep had disastrous consequences. For the next three weeks, we could not turn the clock around. We were awake all night, groggy all day. I almost fell asleep in meetings. I watched 2am turn to 3am turn to 4am. We vowed to never do it again. We could be disciplined. We could stay awake until bedtime.

Then we arrived home from the US on the next trip, exhausted and blurry-eyed.

This is a post I wrote for the wonderful site, You Are Here. You can find out how Indian food helped us overcome our jetlag HERE.

June 7, 2016June 7, 2016

What Matters Most

After nearly seventeen years of marriage we sometimes
spend our Friday nights in the basement, going
through boxes of old stuff,
trying to decide what to keep
and what to cast off.
It’s like the ocean floor down there,
where everything settles after being shaken,
shipwrecked,
sifted.

You go through plastic bins full of children’s clothes,
preparing for this next baby, number six, and we
smile at the sight of clothes the other children wore:
a yellow rain coat; those monkey pajamas; boots
covered in cartoon insects with big eyes. Artifacts
from some other life, reminders of
this long and winding road. You sigh. You fold
each piece with care
and gently place everything here
or there
to keep
or to cast off.

I unearth the boxes of yearbooks and old
journals, binders full of short stories I wrote. In those days
I was certain publication was just
around the corner. Yet here I am,
so many years later, on the cusp of perhaps a book,
or perhaps not. Still waiting.
This is the way of things, the subtle gathering of years,
the persistent belief that words, thought through,
will find their way to the surface.

And then I see a notebook from October, 1997, when
I first laid eyes on you. Noticed you for the first time.
I wrote seven words at the top of the page
of my American Lit Before 1900 binder:
“Fact of the day: she’s from Ohio”
How little we knew of one another.

I read the words out loud to you, and you smile and almost
cry and we laugh, thinking back to who we were.
Who were we? Who would we become? We
had no idea.
How could we? Yet.

Yet.

Yet here we are in the basement of a row home, 20 years
later, somewhere
in the city, the sound of five children running the wooden
floorboards above us, the amniotic movement of another child
twisting and turning inside you.
Here we are, sifting through two decades.
This has been the way
of these years, the keeping and the casting off.
The sense that somehow, that which matters most
will find its way to the surface.

June 3, 2016June 1, 2016

The Sound of a Child Not Breathing Well

This post is about Abra, but this picture is of Leo, in his new favorite place, fireside.

There is the sound of a child who is not breathing well, the sound of inflamed airways, the sound of air-gulping. She comes into our room in the middle of the night, and my wife and I both sit up in bed.

“Abra, are you okay?” I ask, and she nods, because everything is always okay in Abra-land, even when things are not okay. But her eyes are open too-wide, and there is a little panic there, hidden in the blue.

“My breathing,” she says, opening her mouth and pulling in air, and we scramble for medicine, for the inhaler, and for the calming oils. There is the sound of her coughing, and the sound of her swallowing her medicine. There is the popping sound her inhaler makes, the misting psht, the ten long breaths.

This is a guest post over at the wonderful site, You Are Here. You can read the rest of the post HERE.

June 2, 2016June 1, 2016

The Most Important Word

Last week I had the honor of stepping into Seth Haines’ recovery room to talk about my vocation and all the little voices constantly jabbering in my head.

The real struggle for me has been more practical–how does one navigate a life when your income fluctuates so severely from one year to the next, one month to the next? During good years I make more money than I ever thought I would make, but during difficult years we have occasionally (twice) gone 6 – 8 months without making anything. My wife and I have five children (almost six). Not making money for that long can be scary and annoying and stressful. It can quickly lead to voices of self-doubt and judgment.

Nothing has influenced my relationship with God more than my current vocation, precisely because of the ups and downs. One word makes itself known to me during those difficult patches: Trust.

You can read the entire post HERE.