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It’s Time to Leave What is Secure

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Photo by Anna O’Connolly via Unsplash

I think we all have certain time periods of our lives that serve as turning points, the kind of days or months during which everything seems to change. Someone we love passes away. A relationship that meant quite a lot fades. Careers change or vanish. Traumatic moments of abuse scar us, or instances of great love fill us.

These days stand up on our timeline like a lone tree on the horizon. We glance back as we walk away, and when we see that monument to that particular time, it fills us with a renewed sense of hope. Or hurt. Or confusion.

I inevitably think back to the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010 when it felt as if our entire world was vanishing. If you’ve read my book, Building a Life Out of Words (get it free HERE), you know what I’m talking about. It was a time of great hurt for Maile and I, a time of severe disappointment. But it was also a time for starting over, beginning afresh.

Whenever I think about times like that, transitional periods, I think of the wonderful words of Brennan Manning in his book Ruthless Trust:

The reality of naked trust is the life of a pilgrim who leaves what is nailed down, obvious, and secure, and walks into the unknown without any rational explanation to justify the decision or guarantee the future. Why? Because God has signaled the movement and offered it his presence and his promise.

Sometimes, I think it’s hard to move on in life from those poignant moments because those experiences are tangible, they’re nailed down, and they often become that which brings us security. Even the painful stuff. Even the stuff we think we’d rather leave behind. We cling to it, because it’s tangible or because it identifies us.

Sometimes walking into the unknown looks a lot like forgiveness, or a willingness to move on. Sometimes walking into the unknown is taking a deep breath and trying again. Sometimes walking into the unknown means saying “no” for the first time.

Don’t be afraid to leave what is nailed down, obvious, or secure. Leave that lone tree behind. Set your face toward the horizon, and start walking.

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Listening For a Heartbeat

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Photo by Mayur Gala via Unsplash

“It’s going to be fine,” I said.

Winter is a strange time of year. One night you spend far too much time staring out the front window, watching the snow fall through the angular light. Less than a week later you’re driving thread-thin country roads, the fields white and heavy, the runoff wearing ruts everywhere. It’s life, I guess, the cold and the sun, the clouds and the blue.

When Maile and I drove out of the city to a birthing center for Maile’s first midwife appointment, the tension was all around us. A January day that felt like spring. But the tension was also inside us. There was the normal excitement of going to the first appointment for this baby. There was also apprehension, the memory of two prior pregnancies where the first appointment didn’t go so well: missing heartbeats, dark circles where a tiny baby should be, miscarried hope.

“It’s going to be fine,” I kept saying, and Maile kept nodding her head on autopilot.

“It’s going to be fine.”

* * * * *

We sat in the examination room and waited. The clock moves slowest in examination rooms, of that I’m sure.

“Is that my uterus?” Maile asked.

I glanced at the desk beside me, where Maile was looking, and there was an almost-life sized plastic model of a woman’s reproductive system. It was kind of strange, seeing it all there in 3D. It was rather…informative.

“I don’t think it’s yours,” I said. “But yeah, I think that’s a uterus.”

“Huh,” she said.

The midwife came in and asked all the normal questions. Yes, this would be baby number six. Yes, this was pregnancy number eight. No, we wouldn’t be taking another copy of the healthy baby book. We had a few extra copies at home.

“You look nervous,” she said.

“It’s just the heartbeat,” Maile said quietly. “I’ll feel better once we hear it.”

“In that case, let’s find it right now,” the midwife said, smiling a kind smile.

* * * * *

How many times in life do we find ourselves on the cusp of something great…or something devastating? How many times do we have to wait for an answer, or a diagnosis, or an outcome? How many times will we sit in the unknown, the terrifying, with nothing to hold on to?

I think the hardest places to hold on to hope are in those arenas where our hope keeps turning out fruitless. When we so desperately want a child, but the months keep coming and going. When we so badly want the cancer to vanish, but it keeps showing up somewhere else. When we keep coming around to the same submissions, the same proposals, the same promotions, and we keep getting passed over.

Every. Single. Time.

But wait. Because even in those times, even in those disappointments, hope was not fruitless. Hope was not pointless.

Even after our last miscarriage, we buried what remained in a small box, and on the lid of that box was the word hope. Even after my last long spell without work, we regathered ourselves and put one foot in front of the other, hoping things would turn around. Even after we lost our way, we kept hoping we could find that path again.

“And now these three remain: hope, faith, and love. And the greatest of these is love.”

Yes, perhaps love is the greatest, but hope came first, and I think that’s saying something. Sometimes, hope is all we have, but it makes a firm foundation for whatever is coming next. Or whatever is not coming next.

* * * * *

Maile climbed up on to the table, paper rustling, and the midwife pulled up her shirt, exposed Maile’s rounding belly. She put some gel on the little wand and pressed it down on her skin. We didn’t even have time to worry. We barely had time to wonder.

Thump, thump, thump: 159 of them per minute, life racing around inside of her. The occasional Thwamp! when baby kicked. It was like radio waves coming from a distant planet, an entirely separate universe, yet that universe was right there in the room with us.

“There it is,” the midwife said. “Baby’s heartbeat.”

Maile teared up. She looked over at me.

“It’s going to be fine,” I said. “It’s going to be fine.”

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Some Thoughts Regarding Baby Number Six. Yes. You Read That Right.

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Later this year, Maile and I will celebrate our 17th wedding anniversary. That’s a long time. Seventeen years ago, it was a different millennium. We spent our first New Year’s Eve together in 1999 as newlyweds in Jacksonville, Florida, waiting for the world to collapse under the weight of all those nines turning into zeroes. Seventeen years ago not very many people had an email account. In 1999, Justin Bieber was five years old.

The main reason I bring this up is simply to say that 17 years is a long time, and after 17 years you get to know someone pretty well. So when Maile leaned around the corner a few weeks ago, her head peeking out of the bathroom, and asked me the following question, I knew she wasn’t joking. I had seventeen years of experience in knowing the difference.

“So, are you ready for baby number six?” she asked, her eyes round, like a deer in the headlights. I just kind of stared at her. Everything went silent, except, of course, the sound of our five children playing in other parts of the house. Yes. Five plus one does indeed equal six.

* * * * *

It’s difficult to talk about this baby number six because I have more than a few close friends who would love to have baby number one, but for who-knows-what-reason, they haven’t yet. When I compare how I feel right now to how I know they would feel with a baby on the way, I feel a little guilty, a little ungrateful.

This is one of the most difficult things in life, the unfairness of it all. It seems like things should be more even. It seems like blessings should fall in a way that looks less random, makes more sense.

Good fortune, luck, blessings…whatever you want to call it, it doesn’t make me feel as ecstatic as it did when I was younger. I think I recognize better now the pain on the other side of the gift, the emptiness that trails along behind good things. I am happy, yes, I am grateful and amazed and full of thanks, but I also bear the weight of those who still seek, those who still yearn after something, something really good, something that just never seems to arrive.

Can we live in that tension between the having and the wanting? The blessing and the waiting? Can we celebrate and mourn with those we love at the same time?

* * * * *

To be honest, my answer to the question Maile asked from the bathroom was, “Not yet. I will be, when it’s time, but not yet.” I know I’ll be ready. I know after I hear the heartbeat in a few weeks, I’ll even be excited, falling in love with this next addition to our wonderful family. But right now? Honestly? I feel too old to be setting out on this journey again – I turn 40 in December. Leo will be just over two, and he still isn’t sleeping well, and I’m tired. Lord, I’m tired. Maile and I both are.

Thinking about baby number six is also tough because Maile has miscarried twice before. Twice we’ve gone in for the first scan at around 12 to 14 weeks only to discover there was no heartbeat. Things were not progressing. Twice we’ve left that appointment in tears. Twice we’ve gone home and gathered our children in a mass of humanity on the couch and explained what happened to the baby growing inside mama and then had a huge, family cry together.

And we can get through that again, if Maile’s upcoming scan reveals the worst. But I feel too old for that, too. Too weary, right now, for deep grief.

* * * * *

I remember when we found out Maile was pregnant with Cade, thirteen years ago. We had been trying for six months and Maile fretted she would never be able to get pregnant. We lived in England. I worked in London, and she was taking a cooking class at Leith’s School of Food and Wine, and everything they cooked made her morning-sickness tummy feel like throwing up. I would meet her at the tube station and we’d board the train and she would hand me the food she’d made and I would devour it.

That first night after we found out she was pregnant, I found a kid’s clothing store downtown and bought her an outfit for the baby with a little giraffe on it. She cried when I gave it to her on the train. We sat close the whole ride home, her head resting on my shoulder, the weight of the existence of a new human being heavy on our souls.

* * * * *

I also remember Maile’s last miscarriage, three years ago, the two of us on the floor in the bathroom with her going back and forth between throwing up and passing blood clots. I ladled the ruby red human tissue out of the water with a slotted spoon so the doctors could analyze it. I put it in a baggy and we handed it in, feeling a sense of betrayal and deep loss. There was so much there, in the clear plastic. An entire world. A universe.

She slept for days on end. The kids asked what was wrong. I told them. It was like a nightmare but duller around the edges.

* * * * *

Now, here we are once again. We’ve got the noise and chatter of five wonderful children in the house, the mess and the chaos and the love to prove it. We’ve got a one-year-old who I lay down beside almost every night, the carpet leaving marks on the side of my face. And inside Maile, that miracle.

This is not the life I expected or planned. I can assure you of that. But it has more depth, more meaning, than I ever knew a life could have. The sadness is heavier, the joy less transient. Of course, it’s not just the children that make it that way – it’s the friends, the successes, the failures, the questions, the doubts, the certainties. The blessings. The empty spaces. All of it, balled up into one beautiful thing called life.

You know, just in writing this out I can feel my answer to Maile’s question shifting towards a yes. I am ready. There is a space here in our family for this little one.

Now, we wait.

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The S-Word to Watch Out For This Year

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This is Leo, peering into the New Year (metaphorically speaking).

We’re four days into the New Year, and it’s about the time when you can smell the burned-out rubble of New Year’s resolutions left to die along the highway. It reminds me of the way those little race cars smelled, the ones that zoomed around the plastic tracks until you gave it too much throttle and they flew off the curve.

That’s too many of us, I think, at this time of year, suddenly deciding to go full-throttle on this thing or that, running or weight loss, reading or who-knows-what-else, and before we know it, an unexpected curve in the road sends us vaulting over the side, our engines smelling like hot oil and burned-out tires.

* * * * *

“Each day holds a surprise. But only if we expect it can we see, hear, or feel it when it comes to us. Let’s not be afraid to receive each day’s surprise, whether it comes to us as sorrow or as joy. It will open a new place in our hearts, a place where we can welcome new friends and celebrate more fully our shared humanity.” Henri Nouwen

* * * * *

Perhaps the greatest weakness in our resolutions or intentions or hopes for 2016 is that there’s no accounting for the s-word: SURPRISE. Even our most inspired intentions will often get plowed over by the surprises waiting for us: that new promotion, that unexpected diagnosis, that change in the market, that death in the family, that birth in the family, that inability to stay sober, or that surprising spell of freedom from that which has for so long enchained us.

I’m right there with you. I’ve already had some major surprises, many of which I’ll be writing about in the coming weeks. But here’s the thing. THE THING. I’m telling you:

We cannot let surprises derail our hope.

When the surprises come (and they will – perhaps they already have for you), we cannot give them the power to ruin us. Surprises, perhaps more than anything else, have the ability to knock the wind out of our sails, to render us motionless, to send us to the mat in despair.

We cannot let surprises derail our hope…but we also need to let them run their full course, because surprises, unlike resolutions or intentions, can completely transform us. We can become someone we never thought we could become, sometimes only by the power of that which surprises us. Grief can be surprising. So can joy, or good fortune, or change. Love or betrayal or moving from this place to that. So many surprises. So many transformations waiting to happen.

This is the fine line we must walk. When surprises come, can we let them transform us without letting them destroy us completely? If you can somehow do that, if you can, as Henri Nouwen so beautifully says, “allow surprises to open new places in your heart,” you will have a year no resolution or intention could ever have brought you.

 

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On Turning 39 and Looking Up

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It’s always a bit of an ordeal, getting all six of us arranged in the small pew (Leo stays in the nursery during the service). Sam needs to be beside an adult and not beside Cade. Cade wants to sit at the inside edge so he can see. Lucy usually wants to sit beside Cade. Abra gets a little wiggly and needs an adult’s calming influence. It’s kind of like turning a Rubik’s cube. One that you have to shush every so often.

But yesterday Abra clambered into the pew with a big grin on her face. She scooched right up against me, as if was her favorite person in the world, and she handed me a birthday card she had made during her class. On the inside it said:

“Happy 49th Birthday, Daddy!”

Lest you think I am nearing the half-century mark, let’s halt this train right now. Because even though I went to bed last night with a hot water bottle under my lower back and an ice pack on my hip, and even though my beard is more white than brown, I assure you I am only 39. Not 49.

We had a good laugh about it, and later I took the card out of my pocket and stared at it again. Where will I be when I’m 49, I wondered? What will I be doing? My kids will be 22, 21, 17, 16, and 11, and this caused the most difficult realization fell into place.

Dear Lord.

Sammy will have his license.

* * * * *

Abra’s card makes me wonder, though. Ten years. The last ten went by in a blink. Ten years ago Maile and I were moving back from a four-year stint in England with only our oldest two children. The hard work of building a business overseas had worn us out. We had been married for only six years at that point and were like babies just learning to swim…paddle, paddle, paddle, mouth drops below the water’s edge, cough and sputter, paddle harder, rise up a bit, paddle, paddle paddle. Sink, rise, swim.

Sometimes it still feels that way. Sometimes we still take on a mouthful of water.

Also, we could never have imagined the heartache waiting for us in those next ten years. A failed business, near financial ruin, two miscarriages, leaving a community we loved. We could never have imagined the glorious things either: three more children, a cross-country trip, success at living a writing life, and finding another community we loved in the heart of a wonderful, small city.

If a lot can happen in a year, then ten years is like a lifetime. What can happen in ten years?

None of us have any idea what can happen in ten years. That’s the answer. We don’t really have a clue.

* * * * *

John Irving says that “If you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it,” and for the last five years I thought for me that meant writing. I had found a way of life I loved. I realized I could help people tell their life stories, and I loved it. I still do. I’m working with three people right now, writing their stories, and when I hand them the book at the end, it’s more than a feeling of accomplishment. It’s like I’ve been able to bottle their story. When their kids read those books and send me emails thanking me for showing them sides of their parents they never knew…and then I think about how lucky I am to make a living doing this…wow.

So that’s what I’ve thought for quite some time now. That is the way of life I love: writing. During the last five years, I have had to find the courage to live that writing life.

But as I think about Abra’s card, and as I look ahead to the next ten years, I’m not so sure. Maybe I will keep writing people’s stories for the next ten years. But maybe, just maybe, the way of life I love isn’t specifically writing. Maybe the way of life I love is this constant upward and onward, like when the Pevensey kids in the Narnia Chronicles finally end up in Real Narnia, and Aslan keeps shouting, “Further up and further in!”

Maybe the way of life I love is this idea that something else is next, something even more adventurous, something even more exhilarating.

Something that will bring me even closer to the heart of God.

* * * * *

This Sunday after church, three wise and gracious people spent about thirty minutes of their time listening to me. We will continue to do this for three or four more weeks, and then, if we think it worth continuing,  we will keep on in some regular way for the foreseeable future. I call them generous because they are there for me, and me alone. They expect nothing from me, other than that I show up, am honest, and join them in this process of seeking.

Specifically, they are there to help me grasp for a greater discernment of where God is leading me. Might God, at the end of a few months, help us to see that I am exactly where I should be, that storytelling and story-gathering is what I have been created to continue doing? That’s a possibility.

But might God also reveal something about me that has, until now, been murky? Might God bring additional clarity to the cloudy corners of my existence?

That’s also likely. More than likely, I’d think, as it always is for those of us who stop and listen.

* * * * *

I’ll end this rather long and rambling post with a question, for you.

Yes, you.

If you opened yourself up, if you honestly set everything else aside and sat quietly in the presence of God, would God say, “Keep going. Keep doing what you’re doing. Stay the course”?

Or would God say, “Okay now. Time to move. Onward and upward! Further up and further in!”

Please don’t let something like expected career path determine your answer. For heaven’s sake, don’t let your age define whether you should stay put or hike further on. Don’t let critical voices or the perceived expectations of others provide you with the answer. Lack of schooling, lack of resources, lack of experience…these things should never have the final word.

Which is it for you? “Keep doing what you’re doing,” or “Further up and further in?”

You can only know the answer to this question if you stop, if you listen.

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Why We Need You to NOT Unfriend, Unfollow, or Block Those You Disagree With On Social Media

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Photo by Martin Knize via Unsplash

Recently someone in my Facebook timeline posted a particularly strong opinion regarding gun control, then went to bed. By the time he woke up the next morning, he discovered that two people he knew had traded arguments and insults in a thread of over 100 comments.

“Well,” he wrote. “You guys have been busy.”

It often seems that we as a world population are more sharply divided than ever. Post an opinion you have on Facebook, anything from the best burger joint to the reason there are so many shootings in this country, and within moments you’ll probably have people vehemently arguing for and against. Some will support you silently with a “like” while others block the post. Some will sing your praises and others will compare you to dog feces.

This is especially true with the hot-button issues of the day: Donald Trump, Syrian refugees, shootings, ISIS, abortion, gay marriage, politics. Never before have we had the forum, and felt so free, to disagree, insult, or take issue with the opinions of people we don’t know and will never meet.

The fractures between us seem to be widening.

* * * * *

About a month ago I started getting involved with a refugee organization here in the city of Lancaster called Church World Service. They help refugees arriving in central PA get acclimated to life in a new country. I asked them if I could help tell the stories of the individuals they were helping, they said yes, and off we went.

A few weeks later, the shooting took place in Paris. Suddenly I realized that many of my friends were against the continued reception of Syrian refugees. I had spent the previous few weeks hearing stories and meeting these hardworking refugees, and my friends didn’t want more of them to come to the US.

I was devastated.

I couldn’t imagine why someone would have the position. I got into a few back-and-forths on Facebook regarding why Christians, of all people, should be helping refugees, no matter the eventual outcome. I felt my insides getting more and more agitated, sort of the way you feel when you start walking across the beach and realize after ten steps that the sand is actually burning your feet.

My initial reaction? Unfollow. Unfriend. Block. I was struggling with the proposition of reading opinions that were diametrically opposed to the things I cared so much about. I wanted to eliminate the source of anxiety.

If anything, this is where social media has become so destructive. It gives us the forum to share our beliefs and opinions without apology, and then it offers us the option of erasing those we disagree with. Before we know it, our online world is nothing more than a group of people affirming our deeply held beliefs and opinions, something that only serves to more deeply entrench us in our positions and alienate us from those who think differently.

Conversations on Facebook start to look like this:

“I believe …”

“Yeah, you’re right!”

“Yeah, thanks!”

“Yeah!”

“Yeah!”

*like*

*like*

* * * * *

Look, I know it’s stressful/annoying/tedious to realize people you know and love are ignorant/stupid/misinformed (or maybe smarter than you).

But we need you to stop alienating yourself from people who disagree with you. Here’s why:

1 – If you are right, if the opinion you have is so correct and righteous and true, then why are you getting upset? You need to stay friends with the idiots, if only in the hope that at some point they will start to see the sense you are making. This will probably not happen on Facebook, but it might. I’ve changed my mind on a lot of things in the last five years, mostly because I became friends with people online and started to recognize the validity of their beliefs.

2 – If you are wrong (and I know that is probably impossible to imagine at this point), then you are the idiot, and hopefully something they say someday will click with you.

3 – If you are both right and wrong in different ways (and I suspect this to be the usual case), then perhaps your opinions and beliefs, by getting together and hanging out a little with the opinions and beliefs of others, can procreate into some third, new, transformative way of viewing the world. Wouldn’t that be impressive? Wouldn’t that be fun?

* * * * *

Next time we’ll talk about why it’s important to share your opinions and beliefs regarding important matters in a tone of kindness. I know – that’s a hard one to grasp. For now, consider keeping the lines of communication open between you and people who think differently. Dialogue with (and about) each other in respectful ways.

The future of humanity might depend on our ability to talk to each other across the wide open spaces created by disagreement.