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We walked up Tchoupitoulas Street towards the French Quarter in New Orleans. The sky? Blue cotton candy. The breeze? A cool sheet. The streets? Alive and beautiful and carefree.

We walked up Tchoupitoulas Street towards the French Quarter on that day between Good Friday and Easter and I noticed a man sitting with his back against a vacant building. Crumbling, hollow, condemned: both the man and the building. They seemed to hold each other up. They seemed to weigh each other down.

He nodded at me, right there on Tchoupitoulas Street, his politely parted lips revealing an inexplicable assortment of gold, silver, plaque, and empty spaces. For some reason the richness of his brown skin immediately made me wonder if he was a grandfather. My youngest daughter, if she would have sat on his lap, would have loved his skin. She would have pulled on it and pinched it and asked him why it was so brown, why it was so freckled. She would have asked him why his teeth were gold, or where the missing ones had gone.

But what did he see when he looked at me? Just another person walking by? A young man blessed with money and a nice family?

A rich young ruler?

I stopped, and New Orleans was quiet. My wife looked back over her shoulder. My four children stared at the man, wondered about him, wondered why I stopped. I never used to give money to people without homes, people without jobs, people without hope. “They’ll only use it for drugs or alcohol,” everyone used to tell me. Then I read something by CS Lewis:

Another things that annoys me is when people say, ‘Why did you give that man money? He’ll probably go and drink it.’ My reply is, ‘But if I kept it, I should have probably drunk it.’

I reached into my pocket. A quarter. That’s all I had. Twenty-five cents.

“I’m sorry, man,” I said, plucking the quarter from my pocket and reaching towards him. “This is all I’ve got. I wish I had more.”

You would have thought I had given him a $100 bill.

“Bless you, brother,” he said through a smile verging on tears in a Louie Armstrong voice.

“Bless you, man,” I said, turning away, feeling a new weight of sadness, as if I carried that building away with me, on my own back.

* * * * *

We spent $40 at a place called Mother’s on an amazing lunch. Jambalaya. Red beans and rice. Shrimp. French Fries. Grits with melted butter. And for the kids, pancakes with butter and syrup. We usually have leftover food when we eat, but it was a late lunch, and we were hungry, and we ate every last bite. And we drank every glass of water at the table.

And it felt so good, being full, and strong, and breathing in the city.

* * * * *

We walked down Decatur Street in the late afternoon, leaving the French Quarter behind with its beauty and its voodoo and its narrow alleyways. The sun? Glaring and hot. The river? Brown and slow. The clouds? Huge and harmless.

We walked down Decatur Street then turned on to Port of New Orleans Place, a broad sidewalk that flows beside the river. Huge empty stages waited for open air concerts to inhabit them. Docks waited for boats to possess them.

Sitting on a bench was a small woman holding a baby. She held a cardboard sign that read, “My baby and me are homeless.”

Probably just a heist to make some money, I thought to myself.

We walked past and I held my breath the way I always do when I walk past someone like that, waiting for lightning to strike me. Then another thought.

What the hell is wrong with me?

By then I had six bucks in cash, so I turned around. Again. Always turning. Always stopping. When I walked toward her, her eyes opened wide, as if I was going to beat her for sitting there. Then, when she saw the bills, she jumped – it literally scared her – as if that was even more startling than the fact that I looked at her.

“Thank you, thank you,” she just kept saying over and over again. “Thank you, thank you.” And I had no reply. Not to her. Not to her child. So I turned my back on her thanks and walked away, shaken.

* * * * *

Along the river there are those huge binoculars that sit on small pedestals, the ones you have to pay 25 cents to use. The ones through which you can’t really see anything.

“Daddy, daddy, we want to look into those things!” my children cried out, their sandals slapping on the concrete as they ran and pushed and vaulted a small wall to get to the magic.

“Awww,” Cade complained. “It costs money. It costs 25 cents.”

I reached into my pocket, then I remembered where my last quarter had gone.

Oh, the joy that accompanies empty pockets.

* * * * *

The winners of Mark Hughes’ book, Sons of Grace, were Michelle Woodman, Donna Tallman, Andrea Ward, Ken Stewart, and Anne Bogel. Please email your mailing address to shawnsmucker@yahoo.com.

I sat at the back of the bus on Friday, Good Friday, and my eyes swam in tears as I soaked up the photos of a memorial service for my dear friends’ baby: a willow tree, pink balloons scattered in a blue sky, and a small white box that fit comfortably in one hand.

I think of other friends who will soon accept delivery of a one-week-old baby boy, given up for adoption by his mother, now claimed by his father. The adoptive parents couldn’t bear to live with the little boy until they knew whether or not they could keep him, so he will spend this limbo-time with my friends. They will love him and feed him and stay up nights with him until the system decides where to place him: with his biological father, or with the parents aching to adopt him. Then my friends will say good-bye.

One of the most beautiful people I know waits to find out about a certain unexpected spot noticed on a PET scan. Monumental shades, those whites and grays and blacks.

We spend so much time waiting in this world. And there is so much death.

* * * * *

In my mind, that is what this weekend is about. When those who follow Christ break their world view down into its four most fundamental elements, this is what remains: Incarnation, Death, Resurrection, and Redemption. Three of those find their most powerful roots in this weekend. A weekend of death, a weekend of resurrection, and a weekend of redemption

They are monumental, really, these concepts. Life changing. Because who among us has not experienced death? Who among us has never felt that shattering of lost hope? That crumbling of great expectations? That sudden split, like a cracking tooth, when we realize that what we had hoped for will never be realized?

* * * * *

I read a story once about a man who moved to a South American country because he had seen pictures of children living among these tall, vaulted piles of stone coffins. The orphans would walk far into this land of death and find old tombs that had broken open, and they would make their home inside of them. This graveyard was one of the few safe places for them in the city, because most of those who wanted to take advantage of the orphans were superstitious and would not follow them in to where they lived amongst the ghosts.

When the man arrived in this South American city, he found things exactly as he had heard. The children had created their own city in amongst the graves. Living beside the dead.

* * * * *

There is so much waiting in this world. And so much death.

But don’t become too accustomed to foraging among the graves. Don’t become numb to the smell that wafts out from the cracked tombs.

Death happens in this life. Dreams shatter. Relationships dissipate. And sometimes it becomes almost comfortable to remain in that broken place, because there is a kind of safety in deciding not to hope again.

Yet there is a resurrection waiting to take place in you. A redemption.

A grave is no place to live.

This guest post comes to you via Mark Hughes, author of Buzz Marketing and Sons of Grace. I had the privilege of hearing him speak at the Killer Tribes conference in Nashville last weekend – his message was both practical and inspirational. If you’d like to win a free copy of Sons of Grace, leave a comment below.

Walk into any bar, barbershop or salon and you’re guaranteed to get an earful of opinions. How many times have you heard discussions beginning with “What we ought to do is…” and how often does this talk lead anywhere?

Whether you’re leading a Fortune 500 company or work for the Post Office, you probably envision the future being different–and better than the present.

I have a friend who was an enforcer in a motorcycle gang now doing a 50 year term for murder, but we’ll get to that later.

Right now there’s a line in a movie that may capture sentiment in your life:  “I’ve finally embraced the life I never wanted.”

You didn’t intend your life to be like this.  You wanted a more compassionate spouse.  You wanted a son that didn’t die in an accident.  You wanted a sibling not affected by drugs.  You wanted a child without a disability.  I know.  I understand.

But every beginning has an ending, and every ending has a new beginning.  It can happen every day.  Tomorrow is a new beginning, and rather than rejecting the life you never wanted, we need to act like professional athletes.  We need to have the courage to play this game of life hurt—getting on the field, and playing through the pain.  Winston Churchill said, “If you’re walking through Hell, keep walking.”

My friend Ron Gruber (“The Motorcycle Gang Member” in the book Sons of Grace) had to develop this quality at an early age. Raised with a sadistically abusive father, courage was something he needed simply to make it from one day to the next:

“You see, I had to learn right out of the gate that a coward will always stop short of crossing the line, allowing himself to think, ‘Don’t do it…you might get hurt.’  For any normal person, this would be called a healthy survival instinct.  But beginning at seven, I had to learn that a winner forces himself beyond any common-sense fear to emerge victorious.  To find the courage I needed to survive, I was forced to abandon normal understanding of good and evil and race into an unfeeling zone that the average man on the street knows nothing about and, hopefully, never will.  That zone would become the major influence in the choices I made in life; both bad and, in the end, good.”

Courage isn’t the same as good judgment.  Ron’s overdeveloped sense of courage that enabled him to win respect from the wrong kinds of people, often by committing atrocious deeds eventually landing him in prison for murder.

Ron’s story seems to blow everyone away—you can read it for free here.  It teaches us some important lessons about courage:

1.    Courage is a decision. Ron brings this into focus when he talks about “crossing the line.” I like to think about this line being the border between thought and action, between what you know and what you do. If you’ve ever jumped into a cold lake then you know exactly what I mean – right before every courageous act is a moment where you understand that this move may have consequences beyond your ability to understand, and that there’s no turning back after the fact. Then you go ahead and do it.

2.    Courage means making yourself vulnerable. There’s an old adage that courage isn’t the absence of fear but the ability to persevere in the face of fear. Whatever it is that you are afraid of – public humiliation, taking a financial loss, or even death – you can’t properly exercise courage unless you expose yourself to it. After all, if you aren’t taking yourself out of your safety zone, then there really isn’t anything brave about what you are doing. But when you do make yourself vulnerable a curious thing happens: you don’t lose fear, but the fear loses its power over you. You gain power, in a sense, by renouncing control.

3.    Courage is a rare trait. There is a reason why we’re naturally drawn to leaders who display courage. It’s not easy! It is counterintuitive, and often requires us to go against the gravitational forces of everything we know.  But everyone will face situations in life that will require responding with true courage. Whether and how you choose to respond when this moment comes for you will depend on your ability to recognize courage not only where it’s already present, but where it is needed.

Have you embraced the life you never wanted—coupled with the fear that comes with it…and the courage that overcomes it?

“No man can be an exile if he remembers that all the world is one city.”
–CS Lewis, Till We Have Faces

* * * * *

The sky over Memphis tonight is cobalt blue, the color of an old bruise, the kind that lingers after a heavy storm. The streets glisten, the cool macadam smells like summer, and even though I cannot hear the cars through the hotel window, I know the sound they make on a wet night like this, their tires shushing everyone.

Cade lays on the fold-out sofa by himself now that Sammy’s been banished to our bedroom for the continued performance of acrobatics. Lucy is on the recliner, at her insistence. Abra is tucked away in a corner, cuddled up on the sofa cushions that were discarded so the bed could spring into being.

And it is mostly quiet.

* * * * *

“Are the gods not just?’
‘Oh no, child. What would become of us if they were?”
-CS Lewis, Till We Have Faces

* * * * *

Yesterday between Nashville and Memphis the voices started up again.

Maybe this was a mistake. You do remember that your current projects end this summer, right? Going on this trip wasn’t exactly the most fiscally responsible decision you’ve ever made.

I kept driving the bus, staring straight ahead.

And what about the kids? They could probably use some stability, especially the older two. They are 8 and 7 after all – how are they ever going to make close friends if you keep moving on?

The narrow road curled through the Tennessee countryside. Endless acres of forest stretched out in both directions. The bus crested each hill like a large boat sweeping to the top of a massive wave.

This whole thing is going to lead to your ruin. Gas prices will skyrocket. You won’t finish your current projects in time. You’ll go broke. Everyone will use you as the poster child for what goes wrong when someone tries to exist outside of the system. And your glorious, splendiforous failure will put smug smiles on the faces of people who’d like to see such irresponsible behavior nipped in the bud.

I downshifted, let the bus coast up against a lower gear, drifted to the bottom of the swell, then started back up again.

* * * * *

“As for all I can tell, the only difference is that what many see we call a real thing, and what only one sees we call a dream.”
-CS Lewis, Till We Have Faces

* * * * *

There was a valley on 412 somewhere east of Ridgetop, TN, that looked like a river should flow through it. But when the trees parted, and we spanned the bridge, there was no water – only an endless river of yellow flowers, winding off in both directions. Yellow as the sun in a child’s coloring book.

In another instant, it was gone. Maile had been at the back of the bus, and when she came front I tried to describe it to her, but I couldn’t. It was like trying to describe the color yellow to someone who has never seen. Wrinkles of doubt formed in the corners of my mind.

I wondered if perhaps it hadn’t been as yellow as I recalled.

* * * * *

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If you’d like to take advantage of this but haven’t yet purchased the book, what are you waiting for? Click on the title in the previous paragraph for links to buy the book.

Tomorrow we leave Nashville. Cozy Nashville with its rolling hills and skyscrapers hiding amongst the forest and so many new friends. Our stay here has felt much like I imagine base camp feels to mountain climbers – the last stop, the last stretch of almost-level ground, the last nervous smiles, and all the while the mountain rises up in the background, through the clouds.

Just about everywhere we’ve been up to this point has been some familiar place. But tomorrow we head west from Nashville, destined for Memphis. Never been there. Then we go on to New Orleans for Easter weekend. Never been there. Then west through Texas.

* * * * *

Occasionally a foreboding feeling creeps up on me, nags in the periphery of my imagination.

This trip is going to change everything, the voice whispers. You have no idea.

In some ways I feel it already has. I feel like a different person – it’s impossible to meet so many intriguing people, hear so many fascinating stories, see so many different places, without changing.

Yet I can’t quite put my finger on it, the exact ways I have been changed. It’s like a subtle itch under the skin, or growing pains. It’s an ache, an absence, a tremor.

A sigh.

* * * * *

This is the exciting part of Christianity. Waiting for the resurrection. Knowing that any day now, the ground will shudder, a light will shine, and I’ll hear the crushing sound of a massive rock rolling.

The damp smell of a hole in the ground.

And the weight of an unexpected emptiness.

This adventure, the one Maile and I began when we stood at our kitchen counter in Leesburg, Virginia and realized we were going to have to move into my parents’ basement: it’s just beginning. For the longest time I’ve been waiting for it to come to an end. I thought that after making the “right” decision, taking on writing as a career, the end was nearly in sight. As if that decision would stand as the marker of what I had done, and from then on we could work our way back into the kind of life that everyone else lives.

“Soon, my life will look like everyone else’s. Soon my unorthodox decision will pay off big and I’ll be just like everyone else.”

I am beginning to realize that what I have chosen is not a specific vocation, but a worldview. The importance of the decision we made in Leesburg was not for me to pursue writing as a career, but to pursue life in all of its exciting, scary, adventurous permutations.

This is what I hope for you. Not that you would be know as “that person who gave up their job to do what they loved to do.” As good as that sounds, and as exciting as that would be, that step is just the beginning of a wilder, deeper, richer story.

I hope that you will be known as a person who lives. Really lives. Someone who makes decisions, not based on what’s expected, but on what’s possible. Someone who does things, not because everyone else is doing them, but because it’s what you want to do more than anything else in the world.

Now that would be a life worth living.

This is a small excerpt from my E-book released this past Tuesday, entitled “Building a Life Out of Words.” Like what you’ve just read? Then go buy the E-book HERE – it’s only $3.99.