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This place is the land that never changes. Years pass, but as soon as I step foot on the fairgrounds it’s like I’m twelve years old again. We’re still slicing ham and cheese and we’re using the same old dough mixer that we used 25 years ago when we first started making soft pretzels. Doug and Jeff still bring our Coke and Keith the electrician comes by to hook us up to power. The Ferris wheel goes up in the same place, like a slowly turning North Star, and the same crackling voice makes announcements over the loudspeaker.

Of course, some things change. Our friends Jim and Suzy aren’t here anymore. Our tent is bigger than it used to be. The fairgrounds are safer at night.

And this year the Trash Man didn’t show up.

His name is Pete and he is an old man who reminds me of my grandpa. He wore those collared shirts mechanics wear, with his name on a small patch just above his heart and navy pants no matter how hot it was. His eyes were set deep and his skin was tan and worn. A few years ago we had a long conversation, for the first time. It went something like this.

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You can read the rest of today’s post over at A Deeper Story.

Rising up out of the murky waters of anesthesia, I realize they are wheeling me back to my small room. I lay there, coming to my senses. I am at the doctor’s office. I just had a colonoscopy. Maile is in the waiting room.

The doctor comes in and asks me how I feel. He reviews the images with me, but only a few phrases stick in my mind: “very advanced stage of Crohn’s disease”…”removed multiple polyps surrounding what looks to be the early stages of a fistula”…”recommending medication you would have to take through an IV once a month at the hospital.”

I nod, nod, nod, knowing this is when you should ask questions, but my mind is still not there. I make an appointment for three weeks down the road for another consultation, then walk out to where Maile is waiting for me.

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I lay in another bed, this time my own. I stare at the ceiling and listen to the traffic going by on James Street. The ceiling fan spins. Maile gets up in the darkness, retrieves Leo, and feeds him. He is three months old with his whole life ahead of him. This is how the night passes when you stare at the ceiling.

There’s something wrong with me, something that can’t be easily fixed, something that doesn’t have a cure or a surgery. It’s something I will have until I die. Maybe I can control the flare-ups, maybe I can’t, but it will always be there.

This is a strange thing to comprehend, when you are 37. It brings to mind many things, and moving slowly to the forefront is this glaring thing called my mortality. I will die.

Most days it’s easy to forget that we will die. Most days it’s easy to think we will live forever. But then, every so often, you are brought face to face with the breaking down of your body, the erosion of this physical existence over time, our mental fragility, and it is not easy.

I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling.

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Two days later I bought a dog.

I am not a spontaneous person. I spent six months researching laptops before I bought my last one five years ago. I rarely make big purchases, go on last-second trips, or drop by unannounced. I am rather hobbit-ish in nature, and while I enjoy a good adventure from time to time, any day spent alone in my office is a good day.

For a week or two leading up to my colonoscopy, I had been talking about getting a dog. Maile’s response was lukewarm at best.

“We have a baby,” she said. “We just moved.”

“It would be nice for you to have a dog in the house when I’m away,” I suggested.

She stared at me.

“I’m not getting a dog,” she said. “YOU can get a dog. But I’m not getting a dog.”

For some reason I chose to only hear the middle part of that, so on the Friday after I had my colonoscopy, I went out and bought a boxer.

I don’t even know who I am anymore.

When I called Maile on my way home and told her about our new boxer Clementine, she burst into tears.

Have you ever had a good friend ask you a question that was so on target it took your breath away? Have you ever had a friend whose insight into your life left you feeling rather naked?

A few days after I brought home THE DOG, Maile looked at me across the table and asked me one of those questions. It came during a particularly emotional conversation. Maile may have cried. I may have sighed a lot. Then she asked me,

“Do you think you got the dog to distract you from this Crohn’s disease?”

Yes, that’s the sound of the wind getting knocked out of me.

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There are dozens of things I could have been diagnosed with that would have been worse. Crohn’s is not a death sentence, and I’m hoping that with meditation and exercise and a diet change and prayer (and as little medication as possible), I can go into remission and stay there. My aunt is battling cancer; my friend’s father is grappling with ALS; others I know deal with chronic pain and severe disabilities. Crohn’s is none of these.

I think, at the end of the day, the reason the diagnosis affected me the most is that it reminded me that I will not be here forever. I don’t think this is a bad thing to be reminded of. I think it’s something we all need to think about, from time to time. But when a simple reminder of that fact feels like such a huge blow, I have to wonder.

What is it about the way I see and live my life that makes it so difficult to ponder my death?

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So.

It’s been a rough seven days. Last Tuesday my truck got hit-and-run while parked on the street in front of our house. On Saturday the van we were borrowing (while my truck got fixed) broke down and left us stranded while we were trying to get to a retreat. Today we found a new home for our dog, a sad day, and when I went out back to get the rest of her stuff I realized my bike had been stolen.

But even after all of that stuff, I still remember how I felt walking out of the hospital after my recent three-day stay. I still remember how happy I felt to be out, to be alive, to be walking down the street on a beautiful summer day. Alive. I felt very alive, but more than that, I felt very thankful and determined to live a life that valued the things that are important to me, not the things that are urgent or demanding my attention or even the things everyone else thinks are important.

I don’t want to lose that feeling. That thankfulness.

That is what I keep coming back to.

 

Please check out this new book by my friend Ed Cyzewski, A Christian Survival Guide. Here’s a description of the book:

So, without further ado, here are #100Words from A Christian Survival Guide:

King Saul wasn’t the guy you’d want to join on a road trip. Violent without his favorite songs and opposed to stopping for snacks, he would’ve tried the patience of Job. Once, his choice of a rest stop almost cost him his life.

Jealous with his servant David’s military success and popular support, Saul began chasing him throughout the land of Judah. While running from Saul, David often linked his survival to the remote fresh springs of En Gedi along the Dead Sea coast. En Gedi also had a series of caves that made it an ideal location for a fugitive.

When he least expected it, David had an opportunity to secure his own survival.

You can purchase A Christian Survival Guide today only for your Kindle for $2.99.

I developed a paranoia, around that time, that I might drop the communion plate as it passed. They were large, chrome, hubcap-shaped dishes, and they each held at least fifty small plastic cups filled with grape juice. The whole thing shimmered like a ruby, and every time it came to me I held on tight, white-knuckled, quite certain the dish had a life and mind of its own.

That’s a lot of grape juice, I’d think to myself. That’s a lot of blood.

Today I’m writing over at Seth Haines blog. He’s a deep thinker, a profound writer, and a good guy. You can read the rest of my blog HERE (and while you’re there, check out some of Seth’s writing as well).

This one has me feeling slightly depressed.

It’s astonishing, given the brevity of Tolkien’s story and the hours of screen time expended, how many of the novel’s memorable incidents are nevertheless omitted, abbreviated or conflated. The story flies as quickly as possible past Beorn and the horrors of Mirkwood, presumably on the theory that the sooner Bloom and Lily are onscreen the better.

The best review I found, written by…..someone who never read the book:

This second Hobbit movie was for me not just a pleasure, but a revelation. For the first time, I “got” the JRR Tolkien/Peter Jackson experience. I tuned into the frequency. I tasted the fusion cuisine. I heard the eccentric but weirdly rousing choral harmonies. And this is despite – or more probably because of – never having been a Tolkien fan and being agnostic about the myth-making and, indeed, the prose quality.

And then there’s this:

There has been a fair amount of outrage already spilled on the Internet about how Bilbo has been reduced to a secondary character and how the action sequences go on for far too long. But honestly, I didn’t have a problem with either aspect of the movie. Unlike the first “Hobbit,” which spent an undue amount of time trying to develop characters that we never would really care about, this one is more interested in the chase.

So do you care whether or not the movie remains true to the general character of the book, or are you just looking for some Middle Earth in your life and you’ll take it any way you can get it?

Some blog posts in the internetiverse that got my attention this week:

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And here’s what I love about God: when I couldn’t bring myself to read his words, he came to me in mine.

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But now, well, it’s all that bitter sweet can be.  I get to remember my mom, and I get to remember her death . . . and because she died on a holiday that doesn’t occur on the same date every year, I get to do that twice.

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At 6:30 AM Friday morning the funeral home doors opened.  This was the situation at 6:15: [From “Black Friday at the Funeral Home“]

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Friend after friend announces agent contracts and publishing deals. This one didn’t even have to write a query letter and that one got into a bidding war. And oh my, I’m happy for them but all these victories tear at me.  There is no forward momentum in my own writing and I fear this year will be for naught. What will this mean for next year? Five years from now?

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we forget about the beauty of the sacrifice.

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Because while the truth may set you free, it’s a rare person who won’t go a few rounds with it before finally surrendering and admitting defeat.

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The Worst Toys of 2012 (A Series of Posts)

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And yet, isn’t it true that when we’re uncomfortable, we reach more for God and do more for Him? When things aren’t right, we work to make them so. When life gets hard, we find empathy we didn’t know we had.