It is a warm day, the day he turns eight years old, and he eats his birthday waffles and drinks his birthday coffee – decaf – and while the morning sun in North Carolina burns off the nighttime rain, he begs to go out and try his bike for the first time. I push this new two-wheeled beauty out through the front door and the morning heat is a blanket and we’re both sweating before he so much as sits on the seat. His mouth is a straight line and his eyes are unblinking. The houses are lined up and quiet, sleeping in. The woods behind the line of houses is still, a mid-summer green, and the shadows lurk dark, like sun spots.
We begin with long runs back and forth on the dead end street, him pedaling and wobbling while I hold the back of his seat and jog alongside. There are very few cars on this Saturday morning. Back and forth we go. His little legs pump. His hands white-knuckle the handlebars. He fights to get it. This is Sam. He is a fighter. He does not quit, yet it is hard to imagine how he will go from this wobbling thing to a balanced rider gliding on two wheels. Sometimes it is nearly impossible to see the what-might-be.
I realize, at some point, he will never learn unless I let him go, unless I pry my fingers from the back of his seat, so I do, and keep jogging with him, holding my breath, and then he is riding! Riding! He glances over and sees I am no longer holding him up and he jerks to the left and the wheel catches and he falls to the macadam.
Dad, he shouts. You can’t let go.
You have to keep going. Even when I let go. Keep looking straight ahead. Don’t look at me.
Back and forth we go again. He grows more confident with each pass, and I let go again, but this time I hang back so he doesn’t see I’ve let go and he rides all the way to the cul-de-sac and squeezes the brakes and I catch up and he grins at me over his shoulder.
I realize, in that instant, that he will learn nothing about riding bike until I let him fail. In fact, the more I let him fail, the faster he learns.
Soon, I let him start off on his own, and the first five tries, the first ten tries, are false starts and swerves into mailboxes and frustration after frustration but soon he is kicking off on on his own and wobbling down the street, pedaling and swaying and swerving at things. But doing it. Riding his bike with a grin on his face and sweat at his temples that clumbs his hair into straw.
You’re doing it, I shout. You’re really doing it. And at about that time he starts going towards a mailbox and I can see him leaning away from it, wanting not to hit it, but so focused on it that the bike doesn’t know where else to go. He brakes. He hits the mailbox. He looks over his shoulder at me again and shakes his head as if to say, Why couldn’t I escape its magnetic pull?
And this, too, I learn from teaching my son to ride bike, that if we focus on something, we will go towards it, even if we don’t want to. What we focus on becomes our target.
* * * * *
Thanks to my friend, Seth, I’ve been thinking a lot about failure, about honesty, about what it means to own up to the journey we’ve had. Teaching my son to ride bike has taught me a lot about failure. I am reminded that it’s possible, crucial even, to learn to fail well – it’s the difference between falling on your feet or falling on your face. I am reminded that failing fast is the best way to do it.
But I’m also reminded that if you focus on something too much, you’ll ride right into it.
“I’m making this request to the formula-peddling self-helpers (Christian and otherwise): Don’t just sell me your answers; show me your work.”
Now, I hope I’m not a formula-peddling self-helper (Christian or otherwise), but I think there’s something crucial about this charge that goes beyond just those peddling self-help. I think we all owe it to each other not just to post the glorious destination where we currently find ourselves, but to be honest about the work, and the failure, it took to get there.
Can I tell you about being a self-employed co-writer? There are many formula-peddling self-helpers out there who are happy to convince you that YOU TOO! can make a living as a writer and what a glorious living it will be, sitting at your desk with a window overlooking the lake, the checks pouring in, a well-trained, non-shedding dog curled up at your feet. All you have to do is build your platform by successfully and dutifully accomplishing x and y and z. All you have to do is wake up early and BUY THIS BOOK and PAY FOR THIS COURSE.
Well, here is the life you are buying books and courses for. I’ll try to be brief.
* * * * *
I make a living by having three to five customers per year. Sounds easy, right? Simply find three to five people who’d like you to help them write, and sometimes publish, a book. I’ve been doing this full time for about eight years now. Just for the record.
Most of those years have gone smoothly, income wise. Some years I’ve made more money that I ever thought I would make. But when you need three to five customers, some years you get two customers. What would you do if your income dropped by 50%? I’ve opened a baked goods table at a local sports complex to try to pay the bills. I’ve painted the mullions on old house windows in the almost-winter for extra money. I’ve worked at farmer’s market stands. My wife got a part-time job. I drive for Uber and Lyft and get really big tips, only to be reminded that money isn’t everything.
This is not a complaint. These are only the facts. We’re fine right now. Please do not send money. Well, I mean, send money if you want to, but not because you think we’re struggling. It’s been a good summer.
* * * * *
In my first year, when I was inexperienced and didn’t communicate properly to an editor, they brought in another writer to finish the book I wrote. Do you know how humiliating that is, when you’re a beginning co-writer trying to make a name for yourself? Recently, someone took a load of work I did up front in good faith and walked away with it. I made $0. This is my fault. I knew I was taking a chance.
I was unreasonably angry about that one. I may have sent unruly emails I now regret.
* * * * *
And then there are taxes. Sometimes, once you get into debt, you use every extra penny to pay down that debt, but then you haven’t put enough back for taxes, so you get a big bill from the President and – Presto Chango! – you have new debt. Or you have a big year and don’t account well for it, and this is followed by a slow spring, so you don’t have enough to pay the President again.
Did you know you can pay the income taxes you owe in installments? It’s kind of depressing that I know this.
We are figuring things out slowly. This is something you have to look forward to, when all the money you’re spending on self-help books and courses pans out and you become that self-employed-self you’ve always wanted. Unless, of course, one of the books you buy is about properly planning for taxes.
Then, you’ll be fine.
* * * * *
There are, of course, the other failures writers don’t want to talk about.
There are the books that don’t sell that well. The constant reminder you get every quarter or every six months or once every year when the royalty statement arrives from your publisher and reminds you that the book didn’t do as well as anyone hoped and you are, at this rate, 71 years from paying back your advance.
There are the times you show up to do a signing and one smiling person is in line and you sign their book and they walk out and now you have 59 minutes and 10 seconds left in that lonely hour. Plastic smiles are difficult to keep up.
These will all feel like failures. Some of them ARE failures. I’m starting to be okay with it. Not settling for failure, mind you, but embracing the revolutionary act of trying and failing and trying again.
* * * * *
Some people will tell you there’s no such thing as failure. Anything, they say, viewed in the proper way, can be seen as a success. Any seemingly wrong turn, when viewed through the lens of months or years or lessons learned is not a failure at all!
I think this kind of thinking is part of the problem because it perpetuates the failure-avoidance instinct we all have.
I have had to, in the past, put groceries or car repairs or medical bills on a credit card.
I have written books that didn’t turn out the way I had hoped.
I have had disappointed clients.
I have not always made enough money to buy my children the things they want.
I have lived with my parents twice, six months each time, when I was in my 30s. And married. With children.
It’s okay. You know why? Because failure has become dull to me now. When I first started out, failure was like fireworks. Loud explosions, deafening booms, blinding. It shook me and made me question the path I was on.
Failure hasn’t yet become fun. Maybe someday. But it’s settled into something less than fireworks, something more like when a car backfires in the city and at first I think it’s a gun shot. I flinch. I duck. I feel a little embarrassed.
The heat in Carolina is the kind that the trees can lean against when they’re tired, which is most of the time, because the heat will do that to you. Thunderstorms bookend the sky every afternoon, sometimes sailing past to the north, sometimes rumbling in on us so that the neighborhood pool is emptied and the kids scatter back through the neighborhood like ants disturbed. Most mornings, we wake up to find it rained in the night, a rain that spends the rest of the day slowly evaporating, filling the air with heaviness.
In my mind I’m going to Carolina
Can’t you see the sunshine
Can’t you just feel the moonshine
Last summer, Maile was expecting Poppy any day, so we didn’t make the trip down. Two years ago Maile had a part-time job for the summer (that’s another long story). Three years ago it was Leo about to be born. It’s good to be here again, in the heat of the summer months, good to slow down and live life with family we don’t often see, good to enter a new rhythm of writing, good to go to the pool late in the afternoon, watch movies almost every night.
This is what summers should be, I think. I know I am fortunate to have this. I know this life we live in America is not normal.
But I’ve left those in-between times behind me, at least for now, and this new phase of writing comes with its own challenges. There is the new concern for preorders. There is the building pressure of hope as the release date approaches. There is the swirling mixture of mind games (What if no one buys it? What if everyone buys it?)
There is, during the lead up to a book launch, the increasing temptation to see myself at the center of many things.
* * * * *
We are potty-training Leo here at my in-laws house. It’s become a strange kind of tradition, getting our children out of their diapers while we are in Gastonia, North Carolina.
Leo has been great through it all, quite the character. The first few days, if he started to pee, he’d shout, “It’s leaking!” and spring for the bathroom. But he’s doing great now.
Yesterday morning, I was using the restroom, and I heard someone walk up behind me. I looked over my shoulder. It was Leo.
“You’re doing a great job, Dad!” he said, enthusiastically.
I’m not sure why that story came to mind in this train of thought, but I’m sure a good reason will come to me later.
* * * * *
When I spend my time thinking about preorders for the book and book sales and advances and contracts, it is me at the center of this raging maelstrom, frantic and striving. Great concern pulls down around my shoulders. There is weight to those thoughts, and the rumblings of doom.
But when I let go of that, when I relegate promotion to its rightful place somewhere down the ladder (still on the ladder, mind you, but not at the top), my mind clears. I sit down with my next story or blog post and there is relief, a sense that this is what I’m meant to do, and there is, for the first time in a long while, a sense that I am free to do it. My friend Alison recently recalled this line from Chariots of Fire:
“I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.”
* * * * *
I was speaking with a good friend a few weeks ago about this book, how I could promote it, and he paused for a moment.
“Can I be honest with you for a second?” he said.
“Sure,” I said. Knowing this friend, I expected to get the equivalent of a 2×4 to the head.
“You have to stop being so damn humble. You worked hard on this book. You need to get out there and tell people about it.”
I know he’s right, not necessarily about the humility, but about my reticence to self-promote. So, I will do what I can do. I am sending out books to over 100 people, sharing the news far and wide that this book, this book I worked so hard on, this book I believe in, is being born into the world. I started a Facebook group to help me spread the word (you can join us HERE). I will do what I can do, and many of you have said you’ll help me.
But I also recognize this temptation to put myself at the center – it is the fruit from the tree, it is the Ring of Power, it is the promise of position offered to Edmund. It is an empty promise, a brilliant soap bubble that bursts the moment you touch it.
So I will write my books, and I will do what I can do, and if they sell, they sell, and if they don’t, well, I will keep writing them, because when I write, I feel the pleasure of God.
* * * * *
“You can praise God by peeling a spud if you peel it to perfection. Don’t compromise. Compromise is a language of the devil. Run in God’s name and let the world stand back and in wonder.” Chariots of Fire
A normal night in the Smucker household. Can you find Poppy? Catch all our normal moments at my Instagram account: @shawnsmucker
This post comes to you from the carpeted floor in the bedroom shared by Sam and Leo on the second floor of our row home in Lancaster, PA. The fan is going, because what kind of alien sleeps without the soothing lullaby-hum of a fan? Even though it’s almost 8:30pm, pale sunlight still glows in eerie lines through the blinds. Sam is fast asleep on the floor beside me – he always wants to sleep on the floor. Leo, on the other hand, is turning in his bed, making counter-clockwise journeys so that his head is periodically on his pillow, then the bedside, then at the foot of his bed. And so on. And so forth.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this little book I have coming out on September 5th, nearly three months from now. If you hang out with me on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, you’ve probably heard me talk about it, and I’m sorry if it’s getting repetitive, but it means so much to me, this little book, so I hope you’ll hang in there with me for just a little while longer. I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to release a book into the world; actually, I’ve been thinking about what it means to do anything that feels meaningful, whether it’s releasing a book or starting a business or growing a church or raising children.
Mostly I’ve been asking myself, What do I hope to gain from sending this book into the world? I’m not always thrilled with the answers I give myself. Such as, “A bestseller that will make us filthy rich.” Such as, “Fame beyond my wildest dreams.” Such as, “Confirmation that I’m a wonderful writer and everyone in the world secretly admires me.”
I’m afraid there are many of us out there doing things in the hope that this one meaningful thing we do will somehow drastically change our station in life, that it will swoop down and rescue us from our loneliness or our indebtedness or our failures. I’ve been thinking a lot about this. I’ve been thinking that money and fame and admiration must not be that great because you don’t see all movie stars walking around on cloud nine living wonderfully happy lives. Most wealthy people I personally know have all the same problems I do. Well, different in the leaves, but same in the root.
So, it would seem there is something deeper, some kind of bone-marrow-depth joy that money and fame and admiration only encase. Something that must be cracked into, split open. Something that must be sought.
I wonder: What lies on the other side of all those things I think I want?
The flipside of a financial windfall could be, perhaps, something that has no real affect on me financially in the least.
The opposite of fame could be, perhaps, anonymity.
The opposite of affirmation could be, perhaps, indifference.
Could this be the way to real joy? Not financial excess, but simply having enough? The freedom of creating anonymously? Walking through life without being judged as either enough or lacking?
I feel like I’m rambling.
* * * * *
Leo does another slow spinning lap in his bed, and I can hear him sucking on his finger, which means he is nearly asleep. I can see Maile in our neighboring bedroom, lying on her side of the bed, light on, reading. The lines on the blind are nearly invisible as the alley darkens.
These are the regular moments. These are the moments a life is made of.
* * * * *
I have a little book coming out September 5th. Maybe you’ve heard me mention it? I will work hard to promote it. I will try hard to get the word out. I want to sell copies. I want it to do well.
But as the date draws ever closer, I am pressing in close to the hope of new ideals. The blessing of just enough. The freedom of anonymity. The weightlessness of not being judged. With them, I know I can go on creating, go on writing, go on doing what I’ve been made to do. Money, fame, and accolades are moving targets that draw us ever further from who we really are.
I take a deep breath, suddenly realizing I am already where I want to be. Maile turns out her light. Leo is asleep. The night is upon us.
* * * * *
Despite my new ideals, I’d still really love you to read my upcoming novel, The Day the Angels Fell.
Poppy at her first Maundy Thursday service, her sisters washing her feet.
We walked the six blocks to Saint James on Good Friday, the sun shining, a spring breeze chasing us along the sidewalks. I pushed the double-stroller – occupants varying in combination between Poppy, Leo, Sam, and Abra – and sometimes Maile would come up beside me, quietly, nestling her hand in under my arm. We walked long stretches without saying anything. She sometimes looked up at me with tears in her eyes.
The knowledge of my upcoming trip to Iraq came to us during Lent, just before Holy Week. Everything about Easter week felt heavier to me after my trip details were finalized. Everything felt pregnant with undelivered meaning.
* * * * *
Two-year-old Leo did remarkably well during the Good Friday service, but towards the end, he got antsy, and I took him out into the courtyard. He played in the fountain, carefully picking up tiny pieces of gravel and making small piles, or squatting over the meandering movement of an ant, or eyeing the flowers blooming off to the side.
But he wanted to walk, he wanted to run, and around the corner of the church he fled. I followed him through the arches, past the climbing tree (as our middle son Sam calls it), and back, back, back into the church yard. The cemetery.
Two days later, two days after Leo and I wandered among the stones, our church would hold its annual egg hunt there, and children would scramble over the graves, trampling the grass and hugging the trees and walking over all those bones. They would laugh and call out to each other, their new voices filtered by standing reminders of death.
So, Leo and I walked through the stones. He climbed on the graves’ edges, balancing like a man on a cliff. He jumped into the green grass. Would that we all saw death as our playground! We made our way to the far, back corner. There is a memorial stone there, and large granite slabs. While there are no more free spaces in the church’s cemetery, this is where our saints are now remembered. Flowers reached up around the edges.
I saw my friend’s name there on one of the slabs: Nelson Keener. He died one year ago. I sat with my back against the hard stone and watched Leo, now swinging a stick. This is life. This is death. And so it goes.
* * * * *
Planning a trip to Iraq during Holy Week is a wonderful way to come face to face with your mortality. I know the odds are in my favor of returning, perhaps not unscathed emotionally, but at least in one piece physically. It’s the unknown, I suppose. I will be there for a little over a week. If I spent that time here, at home, that week would probably pass by like most other weeks I have come to know. But now, thousands of miles away, in a place decimated by war and conflict, in a place so full of hurting people, that week will be different. Life will be different, measured as happening either before or after my trip to Iraq. This is only a sense that I have. Time will tell.
* * * * *
Can I take a moment and tell you all you need to know about our wonderful priest, Father David? Stay with me. This will all come together in the end.
Imagine this: Easter morning. The church is packed. The choir has made their way to the front, and Father David stands at the front beside Father Rob. The church is ringing with the sound of saints singing, the sound of a trumpet peeling against the beautiful morning light streaming through stained-glass windows. And suddenly, Father David is walking towards me where our family sits in the front row. We are not normally front row people, but on Easter morning the church was full, and we were two minutes late, so there we were.
Anyway, Father David walks down the stairs, comes over to me, and leans in close.
“I think your wife is looking for you,” he whispers, smiling before he turns and walks back to his place. I look around, locate and make eye contact with Mai, and wave her to the front. But it struck me, the fact that my priest would, in the middle of the service, take the time to come down to where I sat and let me know my wife couldn’t find where I was sitting.
This may seem like a small thing to you. I have never seen a pastor do such a thing before, not during such an important service. This is not a small thing.
Nine months in the womb, and now almost nine months out. Poppy has been the icing on our cake.
* * * * *
Father David spoke on Easter morning about those four powerful words the angel uttered to the women at the grave, when they came to see Jesus.
“He is not here.”
Father David went on to say that, basically, it sure feels that way, doesn’t it? I look around at this world I live in, and it’s easy to wonder if God is here or not. And it’s easy to conclude, when you see Syrian children being gassed or pulled out from under the rubble, when you see Iraqi children dying in the wilderness, when you hear of aid workers being killed by ISIS sniper fire, when you hear a woman across your very own street screaming at, and hitting, her child, when you lose yet another friend to cancer…and on and on.
“He is not here.”
And yet. The angel goes on to say, “He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see Him.”
He is going ahead of you.
There, you will see him.
* * * * *
The unasked question I see in many friends’ and relatives’ eyes when I tell them I am going to Iraq is not difficult to recognize. They have, every one, remained verbally positive, but eyes ask questions mouths will not utter.
“You have a family and you’re risking your life on a trip to the Middle East? For what?”
My only answer is that I was asked to do something that fits entirely within the realm of our family’s mission and way of life. But as I think more about it, I realize there is another answer, a truer answer. The true answer to why I am going to Iraq is that God is not here. He is there. He has gone ahead of me.
There, I will see him.
* * * * *
I think we all have an Iraq to go to. God is not here anymore. Do you realize that? He has gone ahead of you. Go! There, you will see him.
* * * * *
If you want to read about someone who is going, who is following the call to wherever there might be, someone who inspires me to stay open to where the spirit might lead, check out my friend Tsh Oxenreider’s beautiful new book, At Home in the World, releasing today! It’s the story of her family of five’s journey around the world. Yes, around the world. Tsh is insightful, funny, adventurous, and you will love this book. I promise.
I’ve never met Tsh or her husband, Kyle, but we’ve become online friends. If you’re intrigued by people who do not allow themselves to be tied down by conventional commitments, people who want to live fresh, meaningful lives, Tsh and Kyle are your kind of people. Here’s a snippet about her newest book:
What would you say if your spouse suggested selling the house, putting the furniture in storage, and taking your three kids under age ten on a nine-month trip around the world? Tsh Oxenreider said, “Thank you for bringing it up first.”
At Home in the World follows their journey from China to New Zealand, Ethiopia to England, and more. They traverse bumpy roads, stand in awe before a waterfall that feels like the edge of the earth, and chase each other through three-foot-wide passageways in Venice. And all the while Tsh grapples with the concept of home, as she learns what it means to be lost—yet at home—in the world.
Check it out HERE or wherever books are sold. Buy it. Trust me.
When Father David said what he said on Sunday morning, I immediately grabbed the pen my daughter was drawing with and scribbled his quote at the top of my bulletin. “Hey!” she hissed in quiet protest. Lucy and Cade looked over my shoulder to see what I was doing, what I had stolen from Abra. When I finished writing down Father David’s words, I handed the pen back folded the piece of paper, and tucked it into my pocket. Those words were like a promise to me, like some kind of blessing.
* * * * *
Two years ago, I read a blog post by Ann Voskamp that left me in tears. When Maile came home later that evening, I made her sit down and read it, too. We soaked in Ann’s writing, suddenly aware, awake, to a small part of what was going on in the Middle East, and we were shattered. Empty. We did what we could, we gave what we could, but for the last two years, ever since reading that post, I’ve felt a holy kind of restlessness whenever I thought about the Middle East. It felt, and continues to feel, intensely personal.
This is part of the reason I’ve been so upset by President Trump’s efforts to keep out refugees from the Middle East. This is part of the reason I befriended a Syrian refugee family who recently moved to Lancaster. This is part of the reason I’ve done work with Church World Service and Preemptive Love. The restlessness, the discomfort, has continued to grow. I wanted to do more, but I didn’t know what else I could do.
We all know this sense of helplessness, right? In a world where we see every tragedy, where we witness every injustice, how can we feel anything but helpless? Well, I found a small way to beat back the helplessness, and for me it came in doing small things, whenever I could. You might find this useful, too, when you’re drowning in helplessness, in a sense of smallness.
Ever since reading Ann’s article two years ago, I’ve felt a kind of irresistible pull towards that region of the world. Sometimes I’ve felt impatient to get involved – What’s taking so long, God? At other times, I’ve been content to sit back and wait – after all, our life is busy, and the days fall over each other in their passing. Months get swept away. I can hardly believe two years has passed since I first read that blog post.
Still, there was this invisible trajectory, inevitable in its motion. I think the passing of this time, all these days and weeks and months, have been a grace, God’s way of easing Maile and I into a new movement, one that at first might have been difficult to accept had we not been given so much time for it to grow. I think God knew that if he gave us this opportunity too soon, we might mistakenly pass it up out of fear or practicality or uncertainty. But God gave us time. Two years, to be exact.
I continue to be amazed at God’s adept use of time in my life, this insistence that I wait, that I not have everything precisely when I want it. I’m beginning to think it might be God’s greatest talent, this use of time, this creating of holy space, this invitation into the waiting.
* * * * *
Finally, the penny dropped. I spoke with my agency about a potential project, and that led to a phone conversation with the potential client. I researched her story and what her organization is involved in. What I didn’t expect was the question that came next.
“Would you be willing to travel to Iraq to see the work we’re doing first hand?”
I called Maile as soon as I got off the phone.
“The client wants to know if I’m willing to travel with her to see the work they’re doing.” Maile was quiet on the other end of the line. “So, where do they want you to go?” she finally asked, laughing nervously, because somehow she already knew.
“You’ll never guess,” I said, also starting to laugh, for no reason. We were both giddy with nerves and a sense that what we had dreaded and wanted was upon us.
“Iraq,” she said, and we both stopped laughing. We both grew serious.
“I knew you’d know,” I said.
“The dangerous part of Iraq, or the really dangerous part?” she asked.
“Take your time and think about it. We both have to be okay with this.” I paused. “We’ll talk when I get home.”
Later that day, I walked straight up to the bedroom, past my kids’ greetings and requests for food and shouts to arbitrate some new disagreement. I went up the stairs, back the hall, and into our room, where Maile was folding clothes on the bed and seven-month-old Poppy was sitting, proud of herself, happy to see me.
I started talking, but Maile held up her hand and smiled and there were little seeds of tears in her eyes.
“You’re going to Iraq. We both know it. We’ve both seen this coming for a long time. And I’m okay with it. I don’t know how, or why. But I’m not even worried. It’s the next thing.”
* * * * *
A few days later, Maile and I were up in the study. Through the narrow window, I could see this little city we’ve grown to love. We gathered the kids into the room and they sat down, some on the chair, some on the floor, some on us. We have six, you know, and everyone was there except Poppy.
“So, Daddy has a new writing project,” Maile explained. The kids stared at us. This is nothing new to them. We are constantly talking about having or not having projects, having or not having money, having or not having time. We explain when it’s time to tighten our belts. We explain the value of money and how it relates to time. Then, when a new deposit comes in or a new contract is signed, we celebrate by going out to eat. I hope our honesty with them is a good thing. I don’t want them to be obsessed with money, but I do want them to understand the true cost of a thing.
“To write this book, he has to go to Iraq,” Maile continued. I nodded.
“Is there a war going on there?” Cade asked.
“There’s a lot of conflict,” I conceded. “They’re working on getting rid of ISIS.”
“Is it dangerous?” Lucy asked.
“It’s not the safest place in the world,” I said, shrugging. Maile laughed.
“It is a dangerous place,” Maile said, “but here’s the thing. This is right in line with the purpose of our family. We are adventurous. We try to stand up for people being persecuted. We live differently, or we try to. And when God opens up an opportunity like this, we say yes.”
Maile paused. It was quiet there in that third-floor room.
“Daddy has the opportunity to shed some light in the darkness. He has a chance to share stories people might not otherwise hear.”
Our five oldest kids, including Leo, stared at Maile as if she was explaining the meaning of life. Their eyes were round, their mouths stretched in serious straight lines. I was glad Maile was talking because I felt myself getting choked up. I don’t know if it’s possible to plan a trip to Iraq without at least considering the possibility that you might not come back.
“So Daddy is representing our family, what our family stands for. And that’s why he’s going.”
* * * * *
This writing life, this crazy, beautiful, unpredictable writing life, has led me to so many wonderful places: Sri Lanka, Istanbul, an Iranian community in Los Angeles, middle-of-nowhere Indiana, a Navy SEAL’s house in Maryland, and so many others. I’ve read the sacred diaries of a young woman who committed suicide. I sat across the table and became friends with a father whose young son committed triple homicide. I’ve witnessed firsthand the ridiculous power of forgiveness.
And now, in a few weeks, Jordan and Iraq.
Tonight, I came back early from driving Uber because I’d rather watch some basketball with my son than make another $20 or $30. When facing a trip to a place like Iraq, I am reminded that time is a non-renewable resource. I suddenly see how limited it is, how we hold it without any guarantee, and I find myself spending the minutes more deliberately.
At one point I went into the bathroom and there, on the sink, was my bulletin from Sunday. I unfolded it, square upon folded square, and there at the top were the words I had written down, Father David’s words.
“Live a little more beautifully and dangerously, as Christians should.”
So, I go, and do what I’ve been created to do: tell stories, mine, as well as the stories of those who cannot tell their own. And I represent Maile and my kids and all of us who believe Christ was not about worldly power or cultural success or being first, but about being last, about taking up an Iraq-shaped cross, and going, even when it doesn’t always make sense. Or when it makes perfect sense. And I carry with me the phrase of Father David:
“Live a little more beautifully and dangerously, as Christians should.”
