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Our Next Adventure

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In a few weeks we will pack up our current house – my uncle’s beautiful cabin on forty acres of woods in southern Lancaster County – and move into the city. We’ll trade a patch of green grass and a place where Sam runs outside whenever he wants for a small backyard and an endless stream of pleas for him to stop going outside on his own. We’ll trade the noise of insects and morning birds for that of cars driving past and sledgehammers dismantling the building out back. We’ll trade a window that looks out into a tangle of branches for a window that looks out into a tangle of streets and alleys.

Our sixteen months in the wilderness has been a wonderful time for us as a family. We’ve bonded, learned how to depend on each other, and learned to trust one another. We’ve been snowed in and without electric multiple times. I’ve had to clear trees off the lane, and there were many nights when Maile and I lay in bed listening to the rain and wind pound the roof.

It was a beautiful time.

But I can’t wait to move, because it was also very isolating, living out in the boonies, and our season of isolation is over. Of course we weren’t completely isolated, but when we were home, it was just the six of us. Now, when we are home, it will be the six of us plus Miss Joyce next door and Anthony next door and a nice couple a few houses down and two young ladies we know just around the corner and my Aunt Kate two blocks away. It will be me stopping to talk to the people emerging from the barber shop and the tattoo parlor across the street.

Our sixteen months in the wilderness have prepared us very well for community.

I often hear Christians argue that, if you’re a Christian, you really should live in the city because that’s where Jesus would be. That’s where we are needed the most. I understand that argument, but I also cannot abide people telling other people what they should and should not do. What’s “best.” There are seasons to everyone’s life, seasons when the country might call, seasons when the city reaches out to you, seasons for public school and private school and homeschooling. Seasons for taking a break from television, or church, or sugar. Seasons for living simply and seasons for enjoying the extravagance of life.

How often we mistakenly take a beautiful season we are in and try to force it on everyone around us. How little we know of the lives we try to shoehorn into our own particular pattern of living.

So in a few weeks we will move into the city, and I will write on our front porch (ala Ken Mueller), and I will watch the people that go by and talk to those who want to talk. We’ll get to know our neighbors and their pets and their children and I’ll take the kids to the park and the Y down the street and we’ll figure out what to do about church.

It’s a new season, a new adventure. I’ll be writing about it, so if you care to join us here, that would be great.

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Pulling My Son Up From Under the Water

Pulling my son up from under the water, his eyes closed and dead, his fingers pinching his nose, there is a moment when I recognize death for what it is. I see it, right there in front of me. But this is a momentary death, and my recognition of it is fleeting. His eyes open, and his flat line mouth turns into sputters, and life, pure life, lights up into a smile.

The water that runs off the head of my son, freshly baptized, is like no water I’ve ever seen. I want to bottle it and take it home. Set it reverently in the corner of my desk, in front of the picture of him when he was crawling around naked after a bath, two years old. I want to put it in front of the picture of my father and I (the three of us share a first name) at my graduation so that I can see that event, that relationship, new, through the magnifying glass of my son’s baptismal water.

I wonder what I would see in that water, if I put it on a small glass slide and viewed it through a microscope. What single cell organisms participated in his rebirth? What tiny amoeba lost its relatives in a drop of water he may have swallowed? The moment was so holy that I find it hard to believe the water wouldn’t be full of signs, full of molecules that point to new life.

* * * * *

Unless a seed dies, it remains a single seed.

* * * * *

And then, my daughter crawled lightly into the tank, so buoyant it felt like I had to hold her down just to keep her from floating into the air. So small. So young. She shook with excitement and nervousness. I wondered what she was thinking at that moment. I wondered what she expected this submersion to accomplish.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Then she was under and coming back up, face first, water running.

I wonder what death she will experience in this life, what disappointments, what discouragements. Sickness and sadness – it waits for all of us, often when we least expect it. I hope this second birth will help her through these things, later, when this baptism is just a distant memory, when all that remains are shadows and dreams of the day her father and grandfather baptized her in a tank of extraordinary water in a small church in Gap, Pennsylvania.

* * * * *

I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

* * * * *

Baptism by fire. Now there’s an image.

I can’t confess to understanding this God, the one who dies, the one who leads us into death, the one who baptizes, not with water but with fire. For while I can collect the water that runs off my children’s heads and stare into it, study it, analyze the minute life that swims in it, I cannot do that with fire. I cannot put fire under a microscope. I cannot soak it’s puddles up with a towel. I cannot stand in it with my children.

None of us even have the will to enter into fire. That sort of baptism – you have to wait for it to fall down.

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The Weight of a Life in a Reusable Grocery Bag

I followed the middle-aged couple out of the coffee shop and across the parking lot. The sun was bright, one of the first warm days of spring. We stopped behind their car, and the mom opened the trunk. She reached in and pulled out a large, reusable grocery bag. The handles stretched tight against the weight of the contents.

“Here they are,” she said.

“I really hate taking these from you,” I said. “I try to never take original photographs or journals from people.”

“You need to read these,” she said. “You need to see inside of her.”

I paused. The bag was heavy.

“I don’t accept these lightly. I will take very good care of them,” I said.

“I know you will,” she said.

* * * * *

There are many things that I love about what I do for a living. I love the life style it affords me and my family. I enjoy working at home, in close proximity to my wife and kids. I am fascinated by the people I get to meet.

But most of all, it’s the stories. It’s the lives that capture me, capture my imagination. Right now, I’m writing the story of a 95-year-old woman who was hugely successful in property. Her husband died in 1958, and she, a single woman, made her way in the business world through the 60s and 70s. She took up golf at 71. She once told me, “I didn’t stop driving at 93 because I thought I was incapable – it was all those other nuts on the road.”

Last year I had the honor of sitting with a dying man in Istanbul, Turkey and writing his life story. Then a 93-yar-old business man. The story of a father whose son confessed to him that he had committed murder. Project after project, story after story, all amazing.

But I have never journeyed into a story like the one for this couple, the one where I walked away from the back of their car with the weight of an entire life in my hands. Inside the bag were over 20 journals written by a young woman named Dawn. The journals detailed her battle with depression. They talk about “the Beast” and “the Imp” and many other forces she tried to overcome, day after day. Eventually, the battle became too much, and Dawn committed suicide.

Some people see those who commit suicide and think, “What a weak choice” or “What a selfish action.” But if you read Dawn’s journals, you quickly realize there are few people stronger than her. Every day that she chose to continue living was a huge victory.

I hope that entering into Dawn’s life this fall will help me, will help all of us, better understand the mindset of those who decide to end their own lives. I hope this story will give us a peek into the heart of someone struggling with a mental illness. I think that this death can lead to some kind of resurrection, some kind of redemption.

* * * * *

The journals sit in that bag in the corner of my room. I’m not ready to go into them just yet. But soon. Soon.

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For When Your Book is Ranked #134,216 on Amazon

I don’t read reviews of the books I’ve written anymore. Well, that’s not entirely true. I do sometimes click over to the page to see if there have been any new reviews, and if they’re good, then my day is fine and I’m a wonderful writer and surely my next book will be a New York Times Bestseller. I bashfully wave at the person who left the review and mouth, “Who, me?” These are the inflating moments, the ego-stroking seconds, when the validation I seek feels found.

And sometimes there is a review that doesn’t quite carry the requisite number of stars, and I find myself muttering arguments under my breath as to how wrong that person is, what a poor reader, how they probably don’t floss, or how they probably pee in the shower. People this stupid – in other words, people who don’t think I’m the next John Steinbeck – shouldn’t be allowed to use the Internet.

Also, every once in a while (or two to three times a day), I’ll check my recent book’s ranking on Amazon. The other day it was 134,216. That means 134,215 books sold more copies than I did, or something along those lines. You can argue with reviews. But you can’t argue with numbers.

This is not encouraging.

* * * * *

This post is for when we feel like we will never be extraordinary at anything.

This post is for when we feel like everyone around us is excelling, and we are existing.

This post is for when we feel overlooked, or under-appreciated.

* * * * *

Every once in a while I get an email from someone who has read one of my books and wants to say ‘hello,’ or ‘thank you,’ or ‘me, too.’ While Amazon reviews give a flash of high or low (sugar coursing through arteries), these kinds of letters are food for my soul.

Last week, when I was feeling especially stupid for taking some time off from promoting myself and my work, when I was wondering if all of these words ever amount to anything, I received the following email:

I just wanted to write and say thank you for Refuse to Drown.  I read “Happiness, A Timeline” on A Deeper Story, I sent it to my husband and said I had to buy that book.  I received it a week later, and read half of it, then put it down.  It was just so hard.  And I know my situation is so different – my son came out in the fall as being transgender, and it’s been one of the hardest things I’ve had to face.  Very few of our friends and family know.

Then two weeks ago, I felt God (I guess anyway – I tend to question if I really hear Him anymore) nudging me to pick up the book again.  I got to the part where Tim talked about how supportive the community was, and how his children were cared for, and I just thought – OK, my kid hasn’t killed anyone, so perhaps I’m not giving my friends enough credit by hiding the truth about my son from them.

The very next day, after I finished the book, my daughter asked when I was going to tell her best friend’s mother, because she wanted to know how much longer they would be allowed to be friends. My heart broke.  I spoke with her friend’s mom last week, and was so relieved to be greeted with love and acceptance.

So anyway, somehow, that book has given me some sort of strength in facing these days ahead.  And I guess I’m also gaining strength by telling people I don’t know first.  I hope you don’t mind.

Your stories on Deeper Story have really spoken to me, too.  I rarely comment, but I think it was the most recent one about a Cruel Thing for God to Do – I just wept.  And I was reminded of when Eustace had to have Aslan tear off his skin because he for all his trying, he couldn’t do it on his own.  I often feel like a bloodied mess these days, and reminding myself that perhaps it’s really that I’m a new creature helps.

Thanks for writing. It matters.

I wept while I read this, thinking of the tough road ahead for this woman and her child. I smiled while I read this, honored to be such a small part in someone’s transformation.

* * * * *

You are valuable. You are crucial to someone. The things you do are not unnoticed. The work you do is not insignificant. The things you do are like heavy rocks dropped into the center of a pond, and the ripples are moving out into every part.
Don’t measure your success as the world does, with the little numbers and dollar signs and titles. There are better measurements: smiles and tears and transformation.

You might be #134,216 to some. But to others, at this particular time, you are the only one.

 

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When I Ask Myself, “Why Do I Still Go To Church?”

One of my favorite parts of a great movie involves a little kid sitting on his tricycle at the end of a short driveway, somewhere in suburbia. Then, Mr. Incredible, depressed and discouraged from his recent lack of involvement in crime fighting and the way he has been shoehorned into an average, ordinary life, arrives home and climbs out of his tiny little car. He looks over his shoulder and sees that boy on a tricycle, staring.

“What are you waiting for?” he demands, still in a foul mood at the boring turn his life has taken.

“I don’t know,” the kid replies, then shrugs and admits, “something amazing, I guess.”

That’s how I feel these days when I go to church.

* * * * *

You can read the rest of this post over at Deeper Church. Just click HERE.

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How to Find Peace in a Noisy World

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As I pull back from various aspects of my life where I used to shout, “Look at me! Look at me!”, those areas are filled with a kind of silence, a silence that very gently transforms into the voice of God whispering, “Here I am.”

There is initially a sense of loss when we choose obscurity over self-promotion, a sense of regret coupled with anxiety as we watch others build their kingdoms larger than ours. The ego is clamoring for its own survival. The ego is worried that it will be annihilated. It becomes a small animal, scratching and clawing for attention, for life, for recognition. But the more we diminish and the longer we allow ourselves to travel down this peaceful path into obscurity, the calmer the ego becomes.

Fame and recognition are like drugs, and when we deny ourselves these temporary ecstacies, the ego experiences the pain of withdrawal. But then, after the tremors and the emotional vomiting, the begging and the anxiety, comes something unexpected.

Peace.

It’s a wonderful freedom, those first few days after your self has come to peaceful terms with the idea that fame is not the goal. The world around you seems more calm and less frenetic. The critical voices in your mind recede because the things they are criticizing about you (your lack of popularity, your lack of wealth, your lack of accomplishments) no longer bear such weight. Those “crucial” beams you once thought were load-bearing turned out to be inconsequential, and in their absence, space opens up.

I found that, for myself, diminishing has allowed me to focus on the voice reminding me that “You are God’s beloved.” When I spend less time worried about what I am accomplishing, accomplishments become less important, and I can see with clarity, perhaps for the first time, that (as Henri Nouwen says), my identity is not found in what I do, what people say about me, or what I own.

My identity is this: I am God’s beloved.

What would it look like for you to diminish? What are some things you would need to relinquish? What are some areas where you would need to let go? How does the idea of traveling into obscurity make you feel?