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What Are You Looking For This Year?

It was late spring, 2008, and I was on a mission to find one thing. I got out of the van and walked through the unusually hot day, across the parking lot, and into the air conditioning. I stopped and took a deep breath. Then I looked around.

I started at the front, checked the new release table. Nothing. Then I walked back, past the beloved fiction section, beyond the self-help. I turned left off the main aisle and slowed down, my eyes sweeping the shelves. Thousands of books. Thousands of authors. Then I saw the business section. Of course. I should have gone there first.

That’s when I saw it.

Or perhaps I should say, I saw “them.” A pile of about fifteen books in the middle of a table, surrounded by similar stacks. A small sign said “New Release – Business.” I looked closer and there it was, my name on one of the books: “with Shawn Smucker.”

I was standing inside the largest Borders Books in the area, staring at my first book.

So why did I feel so underwhelmed?

* * * * *

I was thinking about this moment the other day as 2013 came to an end. I realized that if the payoff for this life I am living was simply seeing books with my name on them, it wouldn’t be enough. Not for me. It had to be about something else.

It had to be about the writing. It had to be about the audience – you folks. It had to be about a conversation, a sort of relationship. It had to be about stories.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, make sure your New Year’s resolutions are for something that will truly give you meaning. Make sure you’re targets are set on something that will give you more than what I got when I saw that book with my name on it in the middle of a sea of books.

What if you lose the weight? What if you find the right person? What if you read 1000 books? What if you stop smoking or start exercising or read your Bible everyday?

What are you really looking for?

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What I Found On the Journey Home

photo-18There’s something fitting about starting a long journey on January 1st. There’s something that feels right about 1023 miles to go, heading north, heading for home. The gray sky leans in and the rain starts to fall and it feels like maybe you’ll never get there, and maybe that’s okay.

The small bumps in the highway form a rhythm, like the back-and-forth swaying of a hypnotist’s locket, and I snag a pillow from the back, tilt my seat, and lean over against the window. Out of the corner of my eye, the road blurs by, mile after mile.

* * * * *

Load the car and write the note
Grab your bag and grab your coat
Tell the ones that need to know
We are headed North

* * * * *

We sit on the beach and I watch my 4-year-old son Sam stand where the waves break, jumping over them again and again. Small, broken, white shells spill all over themselves. He focuses on the next wave, the next wave, and he jumps, and sometimes he falls and sometimes he lands but no matter, he gets up every time and waits for the next wave, waits.

Three of the other nephews and nieces dig and dig, a deepening hole forming in the sand. The sun comes and goes, and the wind forms small swells out beyond the sandbar. They dig. One more scoop, one more rake. Deeper they go, on their way to China.

One of my nieces, two years old and bursting with life, rolls in the sand, then lays on her stomach and stares at it, listening for a message I will never hear. Then she slowly lowers her face until the sand coats it. She looks up at me where I recline, clean and dry on a beach chair, and she smiles, then laughs loud, as if my cleanliness amuses her.

I cringe at so much sand covering skin. The grittiness. The thought of getting down and rolling on the beach, well, it’s simply something I would never do.

But then I think that her rolling in the sand is about as close as it comes to living completely in the present as one can get, no care for what it will take to get clean, no worry about sand in the hair that will not come out, no concern for the thin film of grit that will soon fill the minivan.

When have I rolled in the sand? Too long ago.

* * * * *

One foot in and one foot back
It don’t pay to live like that
So I cut the ties and I jump the tracks
For never to return

* * * * *

Maile and I in sea kayaks, the shore receding behind us. Small green and yellow buoys, the size of cantaloupes, bob in the water, five digit numbers handwritten on them in black marker. I stare down through the blue-green and sometimes spot the sandy floor, eight feet below us. It is rippled, like dessert sand, or pond water after a small boy throws in a large rock. Water within water. Messages within messages.

Faraway boats we cannot see send us their voices in the form of waves, and we crest and drop, crest and drop. Water trickles down the oars and we pull ourselves through the water, getting wet, the wind in our face. I fight the temptation to go further out, further out, further out, until the shore is only a thin line and I am the only thing in the world, the only thing.

Reluctantly we turn towards the beach, and though I paddle less hard, the wind and the waves drive us back to reality. No matter how far you go, there is always the returning. Except perhaps once in life, when there is no going back.

* * * * *

Dumbed down and numbed by time and age
Your dreams that catch the world the cage
The highway sets the traveler’s stage
All exits look the same

Three words that became hard to say
“I and Love and You”
“I and Love and You”
“I and Love and You”

* * * * *

Roll in the sand.

Say the things you’ve been wanting to say.

There’s no going back.

* italicized lyrics from The Avett Brothers song “I and Love and You”

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The Problem With Choosing Hope

It’s a quiet Sunday morning in Venice, Florida, and I’m in our hotel room. The air conditioning sends a steady hum of cool air through the room. The narrow crack in the curtain reveals a low, gray sky. In the neighboring room, an ongoing spate of cartoons babysits the kids. Maile isn’t here – she made the short walk to the workout room just down the hall. It’s a beautifully slow start to another day, and it leaves me feeling contemplative, considering 2014.

2013 was a very good year for us, by just about any measure of a year. The problem with having a good year after a series of very challenging years, especially for an analytical person like myself, is that I stare at the very thin threads that keep us from plummeting back into that space of heartache or disappointment. I find myself thinking, Yes, we had one good year, but…

I have three options when it comes to how I view my unfolding life. I can look at the unknown future and allow uncertainty to fill me with dread at all the horrible things that could happen. Another option would be to face the New Year with a sense of inevitability, to believe that nothing can ever really change.

The third option is to choose hope.

I can choose to believe, no matter how things appear, no matter how I feel, no matter what the “facts” are, that the insurmountable walls will finally crumble this year, that broken relationships will be restored, that those who I love will somehow find health, that I will see the “goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.”

But choosing hope is difficult because it involves opening myself up instead of closing myself off. Hope requires vulnerability. It insists that we get back up, no matter how many times we’ve already fallen. To live in a place of hope means to live in a place where pain, should it come, finds us defenseless, with our hands down at our sides, our most sensitive areas unguarded.

But this is also the wonderful thing about hope, because living life in an unguarded way automatically postures us to see the beauty we may have previously overlooked. You can’t receive anything with a closed fist. Except maybe a black eye.

I take a deep breath. I exhale slowly. I take another deep breath. Then I choose hope.

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Why Your New Year’s Resolutions Are Stupid (And Why Mine Involve Being Less Judgmental)

This photo has nothing at all to do with my post. I simply thought it was funny.
This photo has nothing at all to do with my post. I simply thought it was funny.

Day two on the road and we’re looking at about 600 miles before we arrive. It’s still early in the morning. Maile’s listening to a book on tape, and I’ve been reading Nadia Bolz-Weber’s book Pastrix. The sun is just starting to creep up over the tree-lined highway here in South Carolina, and all the shadows are long and slant hard to our right.

The approaching New Year has me inevitably contemplating resolutions. I love any opportunity for a fresh start, a clean slate, and during the week between Christmas and New Year’s I usually find myself trying to decide how I’m going to improve my life next year. What will I change about myself? What will I start doing? What will I stop?

This year a new thought hit me. Why are all of my New Year’s resolutions centered around being more productive? What if, instead of making resolutions that reflect the judgment I feel towards the areas of myself that I perceive as lacking, I made resolutions full of grace and kindness?

“Essential to the work of reconciliation is a nonjudgmental presence. We are not sent to the world to judge, to condemn, to evaluate, to classify, or to label. When we walk around as if we have to make up our mind about people and tell them what is wrong with them and how they should change, we will only create more division.”

– Henri Nouwen

To illustrate the difference, let me first tell you what I would normally resolve after a year like this one: 1) Exercise daily, because I’m obviously turning into a slob 2) Stop eating sugar, because my teeth are rotting and I’m on my way to diabetes 3) Read my Bible every day because God will love me more and things will go my way. Rules, rules, rules, and probably the reason my New Year’s resolutions rarely last through the first week of the new year.

So what would a kinder, more grace-filled resolutions list look like? Well, I’ve been thinking that I should allow myself some time to read during the day – that seems like a huge luxury, but it’s something I love to do, and it would help my writing. So grace-filled resolution #1 is to allow myself the freedom to read for one hour during the day.

Another resolution I’d like to suggest to myself for this coming year would be to set aside some time (I’m still sure how much or when) where I allow myself to be completely unproductive. I grew up in a culture that stigmatizes laziness to the point where people are sometimes scared to admit that they relax. Because this is so deeply ingrained in my psyche, I know I need to work hard to eliminate that kind of legalistic attitude towards work from my life.

Finally, I have a deep desire to be less judgmental. Why do I feel I have to classify every person I meet, every experience that I have, into these categories of good and bad, right and wrong, Christian and unChristian? What purpose does it serve me or anyone else? I want to work even harder this year at judging less.

“Matthew once said to me, after one of my more finely worded rants about stupid people who have the wrong opinions, ‘Nadia, the thing that sucks is that every time we draw a line between us and others, Jesus is always on the other side of it.’”

– Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastrix

Do you usually make New Year’s resolutions? Are they binding or freeing?

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On Road Trips, Disappointing Decembers, and Not Being Afraid

4361016842As I write this we’re driving south on Route 81 through a very stark Virginia. A few tenacious leaves cling to the trees lining the highway – other than that it’s just brittle, brown grass and small herds of large, black cows scattered like lost notes.

Maile is driving the minivan. When we first met, nearly 17 years ago, neither one of us preferred driving. Being the passenger meant reading or searching the radio for something decent to listen to. Or sleeping. Yes, the heavenly kind of sleep that comes when the car is humming over the road, the sun shining in your face, and mile after lonely mile slips behind you.

But these days being in the passenger seat more closely resembles the life of a flight attendant. Serving food and water. Being in charge of entertainment. Calming the masses. Which means that in between each of these typed sentences I’m handing out oranges and rationing water and shouting, “Don’t drink so much – you’ll have to pee!”

That’s okay, though. It’s a beautiful life.

* * * * *

Starting this long road trip south has me thinking about the upcoming year. The older I get, the more each year feels like a road trip, a journey, an adventure with a very uncertain ending. It has me thinking back over previous Decembers, the endings of those other journeys.

Three years ago we entered December without any significant income lined up. Then a potential client, a longshot, sent me a down payment of $1,000. We paid some overdue bills, bought groceries and a few gifts, and marveled at the timing.

Two years ago we entered December in the same situation. I met with a client I had never met before, hoping that it might lead to a project at some point in the future but holding out little hope that it would meet our immediate needs. I left their house with a check for $5,000, and I just couldn’t stop sighing with relief.

Last year we were at the tail-end of the worst six months we had seen (financially speaking). I was working part time at a farmer’s market, driving Amish people around (this is a job in Lancaster, PA), and doing a little social media work for our church. We had to decide which bills to pay and which to sit on. Christmas was a tightly budgeted affair. The Dollar General was a good friend.

Then, just before the new year, projects started raining in. More work than I had ever seen. And it’s continued through this year, through next year, through the foreseeable future.

* * * * *

I was thinking again about the whole “Do Not Be Afraid” theme we see in the best Bible stories. I was thinking of the time Elijah hid under the tree in the middle of the wilderness and God appeared to him and said, “It’s time to face the people who want to kill you. Don’t be afraid.” I was thinking of the time that the angel appeared to Mary and said, “What’s about to happen to you doesn’t make any sense. Don’t be afraid.” I was thinking about the angel who appeared to the shepherds and said, “You’ve been waiting for this for a long, long time. Don’t be afraid.”

And it has me wondering…maybe that command, “Do not be afraid,” had just as much to do with what was coming down the road as it did with that present moment. What I mean is, maybe the angel said “Don’t Be Afraid,” not because of the fear Mary felt at seeing the angel, but because of the courage required in the coming days, months, and years.

In other words, when God says, “Don’t be afraid,” maybe God means, “Put on your courage. You’re going to need it, and not just right now when you’re scared to death because you can’t bear this unveiled glimpse into eternity. Put on your courage for what’s coming, for the raw experience of life, for the journey I’m about to lead you on.”

If the Bible is any kind of a blueprint, when God tells you, “Don’t be afraid,” an incredible transformation is about to take place. The road is about to get bumpy. Hold on.

* * * * *

We’ve had our share of difficult Decembers. We’ve approached plenty of New Year’s wondering how in the world everything would work out.

But constantly, through all of these changes and challenges and seasons of scarcity, we’ve heard a steady voice.

“It’s going to be okay.”

“Don’t be afraid to hope for good things.”

“Don’t give up now.”

“Don’t be afraid.”

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On Turning 37

photo-17The earliest birthday I remember was when we lived in the dust bowl of Laredo, Texas. I would have been turning four or five years old. I remember it because my mom made me a homemade cake, and I think it was shaped like Grover. Or some other Sesame Street character. I remember feeling so special that she would take the time to make me the cake that I wanted.

One of the other birthdays that sticks out in my mind was a birthday I had when we lived in Virginia. Ten or so of our friends went out to eat with Maile and I to an Indian restaurant in Ashburn. It made me feel loved and appreciated, that so many of our friends would set aside that night, find babysitters, and join us in toasting the fact that I was alive for another year.

Birthdays: the celebration of being.

* * * * *

Yesterday my daughter gave me this birthday card. Yes, it was one day before my birthday and, yes, it kind of looks like I’m wearing a large yarmulke. But you can’t beat three balloons with the number “37” on them, and you certainly can’t beat having a daughter who thinks you’re the best dad ever.

Whenever I have a birthday, I’m reminded of Henri Nouwen’s words:

Birthdays are so important. On our birthdays we celebrate being alive. On our birthdays people can say to us, “Thank you for being!” Birthday presents are signs of our families’ and friends’ joy that we are part of their lives. Little children often look forward to their birthdays for months. Their birthdays are their big days, when they are the center of attention and all their friends come to celebrate.

We should never forget our birthdays or the birthdays of those who are close to us. Birthdays keep us childlike. They remind us that what is important is not what we do or accomplish, not what we have or who we know, but that we are, here and now. On birthdays let us be grateful for the gift of life.

I think that comes from his book, Here and Now.

It is good to be reminded of this, at least once a year, that what is important about me is not the books I write or how many (or how few) people read them, not the things I own or the fame and accomplishments of those I know. What’s important is that I am here, that I exist, and that I get to enjoy this existence with all of you.

Thank you for your friendship, and for so consistently reading the scribbles of this now 37-year-old ragamuffin.

* * * * *

There is a winner in this week’s book giveaway contest and her name is Colleen Butler Coar! Colleen, please message me with your mailing address and I’ll get those books out to you.

* * * * *

I’m reposting one of my favorite blog posts ever over at Deeper Church today. If you’ve ever felt like giving up, you’ll want to check that out by clicking HERE.