Thanks to my uncle for pointing this out. He and I wrote a book about forgiveness in the wake of the Amish schoolhouse shooting (which did not include the aforementioned phrase). Check out our book HERE (scroll down after arriving at that page).

And then there’s this. For you non-football fans attending Super Bowl parties, you’ll want to check out the latest Tripp and Tyler video for all of the important etiquette:

I especially took to heart the advice about not playing a banjo while wearing a Speedo. Enough said.

So where will you be watching the Super Bowl? Will you be watching the Super Bowl? If not, what much more productive thing will you do on Sunday night?

We all want to walk into a place billowing with people and noise and distraction, and then somewhere in that storm we want someone to turn and notice us. We want to see their eyes light up and we want them to forget what they were talking about and we want them to pull up a chair or make a spot at the bar for us. We want them to want to get to know us. We want to know that we matter.

I want you to want me
I need you to need me
I’d love you to love me
I’m beggin’ you to beg me

This desire for friendship and community and intimacy is a beautiful thing. It serves a purpose in the perpetuation of our species by leading to the creation of little people and also to the formation of communities that provide for and protect the individual. We are not all Bear Grylls-types, able to forage on pine cones and various species of moss.

Beyond the physical need, friendship and community fulfill the desires we all have to be loved and to have the opportunity to love others. Many of the emotional needs we have, and much of the pain we encounter, find their answer in this communion of misfits.

Yet a dangerous outcome awaits the individual or community who pursues this insider status for its own sake. We can easily become rather enamored with the way that others accept and love us. How quickly we forget how it felt to be on the outside, to be the one at the party with no one to talk to! How rapidly we erase the memory of that awkward vulnerability!

A strange thought begins tap-tap-tapping within our ego. An alarming worry opens our eyes wide, like that rustling in the middle of the night that sounds very much like someone trying to open the front door.

If I extend the hand of love and fellowship to an outsider, my fellow insiders will lump me with them. I will lose my insider status. I will be seen as different.

And so we ever so slightly turn our shoulder on that passing glance of a stranger, maintaining the insiders’ circle.

* * * * *

I love Lancaster County. The scenic beauty, the memories from my childhood, the friends I’ve made: there are few places on earth like it. We are a generous, honest and family-oriented people. All good things.

But as a whole we are not good at welcoming outsiders. If you move here from somewhere else, I’d be willing to bet that you will always feel at least a little bit “other.” This experience may not be universal, but it is the case of everyone I’ve ever spoken to who has moved into our community from somewhere else.

“It’s a great place to live. An awesome place to raise children,” is the general sentiment. “But I’ve always felt like an outsider.”

There are numerous reasons for this. But at the foundation of our community’s main dysfunction is the elevation of family above all else. After all, most of us who live here can trace our family roots back 10 generations or more simply by opening our coveted copies of The Fisher Book or The Stoltzfus Book.

We go on vacations with our extended family. We spend every single holiday with our extended family. We go to church and spend Sunday afternoons with our extended family.

Of course, it’s our Christian duty to be kind, so we take meals to others and welcome them to the neighborhood and make friends with those “out-of-towners,” but in our heart of hearts we reserve the space of “closest friends” for others like us. And by “like us,” we mean “those who grew up around here.”

* * * * *

I look around at this beautiful community and do you know who I see reaching out to the marginalized people the most?

Strangers. People not from around here. Outsiders.

My friend Chuck Holt has come into Paradise as an “outsider” and fulfills more needs than anyone else I know, working his fingers to the bone at The Factory where he provides a listening ear for hurting kids and a pathway out of poverty for those in the community.

My brother-in-law Ben Halvorsen is from England. He spends every Friday night down at the Kinzer’s Tavern reaching out to people who are one friendship away from a much, much better life. Many church people, people who have been in Lancaster their whole lives, find this association with “notorious sinners” a rather unsavory and perhaps even unacceptable past time.

Bethany Woodcock, after traveling the world for much of her adult life, has spent just about every year she’s lived in our community championing for the rights of the poor and downtrodden. Here. In Lancaster. Where most of us home-towners would rather forget about the little trailer park behind the auto sales lot, or the breathtaking poverty lining the part of Route 30 I rarely drive.

* * * * *

All of this to say.

I am an insider. And I don’t like it. I don’t want it. I want back on the outside.

Maybe our trip will take me there.

* * * * *

As Jesus was speaking to the crowd, his mother and brothers were outside, wanting to talk with him. Someone told Jesus, “Your mother and your brothers are outside, and they want to speak to you.” Jesus asked, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” Then he pointed to his disciples and said, “These are my mother and brothers. Anyone who does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother!” Matthew 12:46-50

There he goes again! Jesus constantly takes the accepted hierarchy and flips it on to its head. In this instance, Jesus’ own family is on the outside, both literally and figuratively…AND HE LEAVES THEM THERE. Replacing them, right there in his inner circle, learning from him and listening to him, are the notorious sinners, the tax collectors, and the outcasts.

What am I going to do with this guy, Jesus, who keeps trying to turn my world upside-down?

* * * * *

And everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or property, for my sake, will receive a hundred times as much in return and will have eternal life. Matthew 19:29

* * * * *

Do you feel like an insider or an outsider in your community? Any hints on how we can all become more geared towards the “outsiders” among us?

Every two years this feast for the boxes takes place.

* * * * *

In 1999, Maile and I moved to Florida. I overindulged in Cheerwhine and we argued with our friend Ryan Swain as to whether or not the small(ish) round fruit growing on trees in our backyard were lemons or oranges. We spent most of our time there carefree, newly married, and a little homesick.

In 2001, we moved to a small cottage named Rocketer in the English countryside (they name their houses over there).

We helped start a business. We grew to love London, bangers and mash, and Indian food. We had our first child and brought him home to a nursery with a back window through which we could hear the lambs bleating in the spring. We argued with our friends regarding the reason so few Americans have their passports. We spent most of our time amazed, stressed out with the business, and somewhat homesick.

In 2003, we moved into an even smaller cottage in Wendover, only a few miles away. We walked into town for groceries and spent Sunday afternoons walking along a narrow canal, watching the ducks. We had our second child at the small hospital a few miles away.

In 2005, we moved to Virginia.

I ran a business and we found a church we loved. The babies became toddlers. I wrote my first book.

In 2007, we moved to a different house, same neighborhood. The business started to slide. We had two more babies. Our friends grew closer. I grew more stressed out. I wrote my second book. Our debt simply grew.

In 2009, we moved into my parent’s basement because we were so far in debt we couldn’t breathe. The six of us settled into subterranean life as I tried to make a living as a writer. It was an amazing adventure. In 2010 we moved into a lovely little house in the country with a garden and a stream and woods and something that felt like hope.

And now, two years later, we are moving again. This time into a bus for four months and then, after that, who knows where. Maybe back into this neighborhood, where I grew up. Maybe into Lancaster City. Maybe into a cabin somewhere between here and California. Who knows.

But tonight I’m kind of tired. I’m tired of boxes and a house that feels upside-down. I’m tired of moving. I’m tired of stubbing my toes on things that no longer have a place.

I’m so ready to be on the road.

I’m not much for complaining, but today I need some fellow whiners…anyone else out there tired? What are you tired of?

The foundation of a marriage forms in a little boy’s heart, when his alcoholic father tells him, “You’ll never amount to anything.” The foundation of a marriage forms in the soul of a little girl, when three neighbor boys sexually abuse her in the dark corner of a barn.

And, so often, the foundations upon which marriages are built are not strong enough to weather the storms that come after “I do”: tragedies, depression, and infidelity send shivers through the already cracked foundation, and too often the structure collapses.

But it doesn’t have to.

This is the true story of a marriage, told in alternating perspectives from the man and woman who lived it, felt it, and fought to keep it together.

* * * * *

This describes my latest co-writing project, And Then We Danced. It’s a project put together with Mike and Fi Lusby, and their story is incredible. Here’s how you can get your hands on a copy: arrange to collect one from us in person, purchase one on my website (scroll down after clicking that link), or order your copy on Amazon.

If, after reading the book, you’d like Mike and Fi to come to your church to share their story, let us know.

First I should tell you that when we approached our wonderful landlords about our upcoming trip, we told them we would be moving out. We couldn’t afford to pay rent AND be on the road, so we planned to put our stuff in storage and then find a new house to live in when we got back this summer.

Our landlords surprised us by telling us not to move out. We could keep our stuff in the house, stop paying rent while we were away, and then pick up where we left off as soon as we got back. That was a shocker. Amazing news.

But there is a small chance we may sell the house before you leave, they said. If we do, you’ll need to move out before the trip.

Then came the phone call the other night, 21 days before our scheduled departure in the big blue bus.

“I’m really sorry,” my landlord said. “We sold the house. You’ll need to move out before you go on your trip.”

Deep breath.

* * * * *

Since receiving the news, Maile and I have come to see it for what it is: a liberating circumstance that frees us up to enjoy our trip even more. Now there’s no need to rush to ensure we get back by the date we had agreed with them. We can take our time. Want to spend another month on the road? As long as I still have writing work, sure, why not.

But I’ll tell you something that has changed: there’s an entirely different feel to a four-month trip that has a home waiting for you when you return, and one that doesn’t. Sort of like the difference between bungee jumping and skydiving. With a bungee jump, there’s that physical attachment to the place your launching from, that thing that will snap you back up away from the ground. But with skydiving, it’s all hidden, a parachute packed away by someone else that you have to trust will open when the time is right.

When I pull that bus on to the road, there isn’t a single thing in the world that’s keeping us anywhere in particular.

Maile looked at me with this strange look after receiving the news and said something I hadn’t expected her to say.

“What if we don’t come back to Lancaster? What if we’re driving around the country and we find a place we want to live.”

It gave me a funny feeling in my stomach, like free-falling.

* * * * *

The more that I engage with God, wrestle with him, try to figure out what he’s up to, the more I begin to realize this one thing: he doesn’t play low-stakes poker. With God, the antes and blinds are always high. I try to minimum-raise him with a fairly decent hand and he just smiles, shakes his head from side to side, and shoves his entire, formidable stack into the center of the table.

“If you’re going to join me in this exciting adventure,” he always seems to say, “you’re going to have to go all in.”

* * * * *

We are still looking for folks willing to set up writer’s gatherings (I’d love to sit and chat with other writers about the art and craft of words) or service projects that we can help out with along the way. Take a look at our itinerary, and if we’re going to be close to you, and you’re interested in helping with one of those two things, email me at shawnsmucker@yahoo.com