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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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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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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?

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When God Tears Off Your Skin

At some point in this back and forth, I stop and let the engine idle until it dies out. Then I sit in the snow silence and stare through the lines of trees to where the sun drops down behind the hills, over the river that’s too far away to see. I sit there and I marvel to myself about how much God asks of us. Nothing short of tearing off our old skin. Nothing short of baring us naked before the world, tender and stinging. Nothing short of that.

That’s a snippet of the blog I wrote that you can find today over at Deeper Story. Click HERE to read the entire post.

* * * * *

I’ve found this whole break from social media and self-promotion an interesting and revealing practice – I’ll blog more about that next week. It’s not easy, when you’ve been shouting for a long time, when you’re used to the attention, to sit down quietly on the park bench and watch all the people walk by. But it’s a good thing.

I hope this is a solid week for you. I hope you find what you’re looking for.

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Why We Feel Worthless

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“‘He must become greater; I must become less.’” (John 3:30)

“…unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed….” (John 12:24)

“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’” (2 Corinthians 12:9)

My daughter is my little adventurer. She is the one who wants to learn to ride the four-wheeler first. She is the one who wants to climb the tree, to creep to the top of the mountain, to let her legs dangle and swing her way across the monkey bars.

Recently we were at a climbing gym and, with her long legs, she scaled the side of the boulder. But she couldn’t quite get to the top. She couldn’t quite bring herself to reach up into the unseen and find a grip, pull herself up.

She came back down and the disappointment hovered around her eyes.

“Next time, Kid,” I said, wrapping her in a hug.

* * * * *

Ever since I decided to give up social media and spend some time “diminishing,” I have questioned the decision. Why? What am I trying to get out of this? What’s the point?

I’m not an ascetic for ascetic’s sake. I don’t want this to become a practice of denying myself simply for the sake of denial – I find that, at least in myself, that sort of thing tends to lead less to awareness and contemplation than it does to a subtle pride. Look at me. Look at how spiritual I can be.

That’s not what I’m after.

So why? Why step out of the small limelight I had created? Why stop promoting my writing? Why take a path that would lead, if followed to its logical end, to complete obscurity?

These are the questions I keep asking myself.

* * * * *

I’ve been listening to an Henri Nouwen sermon I found online, one in which he speaks about how each of us is the Beloved (the first part of the sermon is at the bottom of this post). In the sermon he talks about how we try to answer the question, “Who am I?” by analyzing different things in our lives: What do I do? What do people say about me? What do I own?

And as I accomplish wonderful things, as people say nice things about me, and as I purchase things that make me happy, I feel good. I feel like a productive individual. I feel like I am worth something.

But then I fail at something. People say bad things about me. My finances drop and I do not own the things that make me feel good. Suddenly I feel worthless.

This is a never-ending cycle, Nouwen explains, a treadmill from which we must escape because there is no end to it, no end to the striving and the deep-sea crashes. But how? How do we stop defining ourselves by what we do, what people say about us, or what we own?

There is only one way, and that is to understand that I am God’s Beloved. No matter what I do, no matter who I influence, no matter what I have, that remains true.

Do I believe it?

* * * * *

My daughter climbed up to the top of the climbing boulder and sat there. She had finally made it to the top. I could see her head just above the ridge, and she was smiling.

I don’t love her because she made it to the top of the boulder. I don’t love her because the adult next to me looked at me and smiled, thinking good thoughts about her. I don’t love her because of any earthly thing she owns.

I love her, I adore her, because of who she is. She is my daughter, created in my image, and there is nothing she could do to lose that love.

Could I love better than God loves? Could I somehow be more kind or caring towards my daughter than God is towards me? Could I love my daughter with no strings attached while God can only love based on merit or behavior?

No. The simple answer to that is a resounding no.

And this is the lesson I am learning while I let myself diminish, while I watch my blog numbers plummet due to lack of promotion, while I miss out on connecting with agents or publishers because I’m not on Twitter or Facebook. Layers of me are being stripped away, and I am left with the simple knowledge that I am the Beloved, and that is enough.

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How To Dilute Your Own Message and Get Burned Out (or, What I Learned From Making Maple Syrup)

IMG_08352:00am. I got up off the sofa and meandered into the kitchen. I hadn’t thought this whole process would take so long, but there I was, middle of the night, boiling maple sap in five pots and pans on our stove top, trying to turn it into maple syrup. I was skeptical. When I started boiling the twelve gallons, it was clear as water. By 2am, nine hours later, it looked tan, but nothing like syrup.

I went back and sat on the sofa. The whole house was hot and humid from all that boiling down, adding more sap to the pans, boiling down further. I thought back over the last week, since I had stopped getting on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. I have to admit: it’s been a peaceful week. My mind feels much less cluttered and there’s a freedom that comes from not feeling like I always have to check my phone, share this thought, post this photo.

But there’s also been some ego-checking at the door. 70% of my blog traffic comes from Facebook, so without getting on there and promoting my blog, I’m probably headed for a drastic decrease in traffic. It can be hard to come to terms with fading into the shadows. It can be hard to let go of an audience.

It’s difficult to diminish.

“He must become greater. I must become less.” (John 3:30)

I went back out to the kitchen. Enough of the water had boiled out of the sap that I could start pouring the smaller pots into the larger ones. Soon I was down to two large pans. Then one.

That’s when the realization hit me, the metaphor hanging thick as the steam in the room.IMG_0836

Diminishing is hard work. It’s like boiling down maple sap. The heat, the long process, the whole thing is about becoming less and less and less, smaller and smaller, until twelve gallons of maple sap is boiled down into less than two quarts of golden liquid.

I watched the thermometer carefully as it crept upwards. 214 degrees. 215. 216. 217. 218. By now the small saucepan was full of a dark amber liquid. I took a spoonful, scalded my tongue, but the taste was heavenly, like liquid caramel.

219 degrees.

219.5 degrees.

I turned off the heat and the boiling stopped. That was it. That was all that was left of my 12 gallons of sap. Somehow that tasteless, worthless sap, full of ants and bugs, had been concentrated down into pure deliciousness.

When we constantly promote ourselves, when we shout from the rooftops, “Look at me!”, when we say more and more and more…we end up diluting our message. We join the noise, and we try to shout louder, but we can never shout loud enough, and the striving burns us out. It’s all rather exhausting in the end. IMG_0838

It would be like taking a quart of maple syrup and adding twelve gallons of water. Yes, we have more of it. Yes, twelve gallons takes up a considerable amount of space. But you wouldn’t put it on your pancakes.

Diminishing is painful for the ego. Deliberately stepping back from influence, taking a break from leadership, fading gracefully into the shadows stage right: these things do not come naturally. But if we can make space in our lives for seasons of diminishing, all of the flavor will rise to the top. All of the empty water will boil away, and what’s left will be concentrated and rich.

“But he said to me, “’My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’” (2 Corinthians 12:9)

I was doubting my decision this week. I have important things to say, I told myself. I really shouldn’t stop promoting my blog. I shouldn’t stop shouting.

Then I received this email:

Shawn,

I’m writing to let you know that I found your blog this week–several days after you decided to stop promoting it.

…for lots of reasons I made two decisions: a) to walk away from Church and b) change careers and go into medicine.  11 years later I’m an Obstetrician just about to finish residency.  A father of two.  And still don’t go to Church.  

It’s an amazing job.  Delivering babies is wonderful.  But there’s the other half–the stillborn babies and lost pregnancies and ovarian cancer.  Despite the fact that sometimes the suffering and grief are almost unbearable, I find such privilege in taking care of people in those moments.   And that’s why,  when I’m on call late at night, I go searching for people who write about faith in a way that acknowledges suffering and loss.  Most days I don’t believe in God.  But I haven’t given up on faith.  I’m grateful to have found your recent post.  And the post about miscarriage.   And I’ll keep reading.  And wondering.  And will remain grateful for your writing which will make me better at my job.

I thought you should know–that I’m out there learning from your writing–no promotion necessary.

This is it, isn’t it? It’s not about the number of hits. It’s not about the page views or the ad income or the number of comments.

What is it about?

I’m not sure. But I know one thing – it’s not about me.

He must increase. I must decrease.