On Turning 37

photo-17The earliest birthday I remember was when we lived in the dust bowl of Laredo, Texas. I would have been turning four or five years old. I remember it because my mom made me a homemade cake, and I think it was shaped like Grover. Or some other Sesame Street character. I remember feeling so special that she would take the time to make me the cake that I wanted.

One of the other birthdays that sticks out in my mind was a birthday I had when we lived in Virginia. Ten or so of our friends went out to eat with Maile and I to an Indian restaurant in Ashburn. It made me feel loved and appreciated, that so many of our friends would set aside that night, find babysitters, and join us in toasting the fact that I was alive for another year.

Birthdays: the celebration of being.

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Yesterday my daughter gave me this birthday card. Yes, it was one day before my birthday and, yes, it kind of looks like I’m wearing a large yarmulke. But you can’t beat three balloons with the number “37” on them, and you certainly can’t beat having a daughter who thinks you’re the best dad ever.

Whenever I have a birthday, I’m reminded of Henri Nouwen’s words:

Birthdays are so important. On our birthdays we celebrate being alive. On our birthdays people can say to us, “Thank you for being!” Birthday presents are signs of our families’ and friends’ joy that we are part of their lives. Little children often look forward to their birthdays for months. Their birthdays are their big days, when they are the center of attention and all their friends come to celebrate.

We should never forget our birthdays or the birthdays of those who are close to us. Birthdays keep us childlike. They remind us that what is important is not what we do or accomplish, not what we have or who we know, but that we are, here and now. On birthdays let us be grateful for the gift of life.

I think that comes from his book, Here and Now.

It is good to be reminded of this, at least once a year, that what is important about me is not the books I write or how many (or how few) people read them, not the things I own or the fame and accomplishments of those I know. What’s important is that I am here, that I exist, and that I get to enjoy this existence with all of you.

Thank you for your friendship, and for so consistently reading the scribbles of this now 37-year-old ragamuffin.

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There is a winner in this week’s book giveaway contest and her name is Colleen Butler Coar! Colleen, please message me with your mailing address and I’ll get those books out to you.

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I’m reposting one of my favorite blog posts ever over at Deeper Church today. If you’ve ever felt like giving up, you’ll want to check that out by clicking HERE.

When Maile Told Me Something I Didn’t Want to Hear

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When I first got married, it was mostly because I thought Maile was smart and gorgeous and she loved to read as much as I did. And also for the sex. Seeing as how I was brought up in the Puritan ideals of abstention, the sex was a major consideration.

But now that we’ve been married for nearly fifteen years, there’s something else I love about her: her honesty. She is my most loyal critic, as well as my greatest supporter, and in a world that will all too quickly inflate you with meaningless praise, an honest, loving critic is worth more than I ever could have dreamed.

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I spent two solid months this summer writing a novel for my children, a book about the things that concerned me when I was a kid, a book about friendship and adventure and dying (I was a melancholy child). I poured myself into that book, to the point that I was emotionally exhausted when I finished. Mentally worn out. And slightly depressed that it was over. Someday, I hope you will read this book.

But I have a fatal flaw for a fiction writer – more than one actually. In real life I avoid conflict, and that carries over into my writing. I protect my characters. No matter how hard I try, they get along too well with one another. They make responsible choices. They lay low.
This is not a good recipe for creating engaging fiction.

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When I returned to blogging about a month ago, you all welcomed me back with open arms. I was away for nearly a year, yet you came back, too. More importantly, I’m enjoying myself again because at some point during my break I got over my obsession with numbers. I no longer get panic attacks if I don’t have a post lined up for the next day. I no longer feel the heart-rending disappointment when a post flops.

Still, I felt a sense of unease. This isn’t really what I want to write, not forever, I told myself at night, staring at the ceiling high above. I want to write fiction. I want to be a novelist.

But a sneaking suspicion had begun to grow in my mind, one that I pondered ever since finishing the book for my kids. And when I didn’t have the strength to say the words out loud, Maile said them for me.

They came after I expressed my novelist frustrations to her one morning. We were making the bed. I went on and on, complaining about my weaknesses as a fiction writer, my unhappiness with the plot of the children’s book I had written. Then she said something, something that I had been thinking but did not have the strength to admit out loud. Something that, if I had let it, could have hurt me deeply.

“You might not want to hear what I have to say,” she said in a kind voice.

“No, go ahead.”

“Maybe,” she said, “just maybe, you’re not a novelist. Maybe you’re a nonfiction writer. That’s your best writing. That’s what people respond to.”

I took a deep breath. Sometimes the truth about ourselves hurts. Sometimes it isn’t exactly what we want to hear.

“I’ve been wondering the same thing,” I admitted.

* * * * *

I wonder how many of us spend our lives trying to be what we want to be instead of embracing who we are? I wonder if this contributes to the truth behind Thoreau’s famous quote that “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Maybe we’re desperate because we’re dishonest with ourselves and with each other about who we are.

What would happen if we were honest with ourselves? What would happen if we listened to the loving voices that speak into our lives, the voices of those who love us, those who can sometimes see what we cannot, or will not, see?

Of course there’s a flip side to this coin, the truth that life is a struggle, a journey, and that anything worth having takes some work, some perseverance. Don’t give up on your dreams. Etcetera, etcetera. But maybe the one thing standing between you and the life you were meant to live is a dash of humility, a small measure of honesty, and a mustard seed of hope.

The hope that who you are, who you were created to be, is enough.

Three Things I Learned About Seeing Life as a Journey

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The bus we traveled in for four months and 10,000 miles.

It’s Sunday night. We’re packing bags and finding lost things and preparing for the journey back to Pennsylvania. There’s a football game on in the background. No matter how many times we tell the kids to go to sleep, I keep hearing the pitter-patter of feet running around upstairs.

It’s also the end of the year, and I find myself thinking back to previous years, previous Thanksgivings. One year ago I didn’t have any writing projects and questioned a lot of things about my life. Two Thanksgivings ago we were finalizing plans to head out on our cross-country trip. Four years ago we had just moved into my parents’ basement with our four kids and $55,000 in debt.

What a journey.

The five-hundred-mile journey ahead of us and the journeys we’ve been on as a family have me thinking about the nature of this life, the nature of journeys.

Here are three things that came to mind late on a Sunday night (when I should be sleeping):

1. You are on your journey, and you can’t trade it for a different one. So many of us get caught up in trying to live lives we think we should live, instead of living the life we’ve been given. Too often the plans we make are more a reflection of what our culture expects than they are of what we’ve been created to do. Make your own way.

2. Embrace whatever leg of the journey you’re on. If life is a series of journeys, then you’re either preparing for a journey, on the road, or resting before the next journey begins. The most difficult of those three, for me, has been the resting, the waiting in between. The times when I didn’t know how everything was going to turn out. The times when I felt forgotten. But these times inevitably come to an end. It’s only wasted time if I spend it worrying and wishing it away.

3. Celebrate. Maybe you’ve published a book. Maybe you’ve gotten married or had children or went on a trip. Maybe you finally got that degree, or that job, or that promotion. Maybe you’ve passed a milestone. Celebrate it. Maile and I have been looking at our lives and trying to figure out how we can become more deliberate about celebrating the completion of journeys. The discipline of celebration is one way of pulling yourself into the present.

What journey have you been on lately? What journey would you like to embark on?

The Calling of Every Human Being Boils Down to This?

What if the calling of every human being boils down to this: create something beautiful in the abandoned spaces; introduce life to the forsaken ruins; resurrect something that seems too far gone to bring back.

Aletheia Schmidt shared this the other day, a time-lapse video of graffiti artists given free reign inside an abandoned warehouse, and those are the thoughts that came to mind.

What are you resurrecting? What are you making new?

The Night Sammy Broke Free

IMG_1045Rain taps against the window. It’s a cold night, a dark night.

I fold four large blankets in half on the floor, help each of the kids get settled in, then turn out the light. We all sleep in the same room when we go to Maile’s parents’ house for the holidays, and I have to admit that there’s something nice about all being there together, everyone accounted for. I often come in late, after everyone is asleep, gingerly walk among the sprawling bodies, then fall asleep listening to the hum of the fan and the quiet, gentle sound of their breathing.

“Daddy, what do you remember about me from when I was little?” Lucy asks. She is our family historian, our rememberer.

I have to think hard. She is eight, and so many thoughts have passed through my brain since she was tiny, so many memories and worries and years. They get caught in there, all of those things, like debris too large to fit through a fine sieve. I shake it around. I see what falls through.

“You used to like it when Cade crawled over you,” I say, suddenly remembering an image of two littles on the floor of a small house in England. Cade, only 16 months older than Lucy, wasn’t very careful around her, but she laughed and laughed, lying on her back as he bowled her over.

They giggle there on the floor as I tell them about it. I sit on the edge of the bed. It all seems not so long ago.

“What about me, Dad?” Sammy asks. “What about me when I was little?”

We all laugh, because we always tell the same story about Sam, how when he was little the rest of us were in the living room watching a movie. There was a crash, and we ran into his room, and he was standing there, outside of his crib, holding on to two bars that he had managed to break off. He quickly ran back and crawled in through the gap in the bars, then sat in his crib, looking up at us as if to say, What? What did I do?

I tell the story again, even though we all know it, and the kids giggle and Sammy is embarrassed, but he still smiles.

Behind my smile I’m remembering how difficult that time was, when we had first come back from Virginia to Pennsylvania, when I was trying to make my way as a writer. Those years when we had to decide at the end of the month which bills to pay and which to hold our breath about. Those years when, let’s be honest, I often felt like an irresponsible loser who didn’t know how to operate in this world, this culture.

Those were difficult years, but the kids want to remember them, so we do.

We pass the time that way, telling stories, the rain tapping on the glass, Thanksgiving only two days away.

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There’s something powerful about remembering. Remembering where we’ve come from, where we’ve been. Sometimes, when we forget who we are, the most helpful thing we can do is remember the road we’ve already traveled. There’s much to be thankful for, and much to be bitter about, if we so choose. There were the days we thought that life couldn’t get much better, and the days when we honestly wouldn’t have complained if death came and took us early.

Such is life. And unless we take time to remember, we lose our perspective, like a boat lost at sea without any reference point. Like a man lost in the forest, unable to see the stars.

Their little voices echo in my mind.

Daddy, what do you remember?

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Today, I’m over at Pilar Arsenec’s blog answering all kinds of questions about writing. You can check out that interview HERE.

A Friendly Reminder: No One Has Any Idea How This Will Turn Out

IMG_1069It’s been in vogue for quite some time now, the whole notion of giving yourself permission to fail. Various gurus and motivational types have been saying it for years. Fail forward. Fail fast. Fail repeatedly.

I get that, and I admit that failing quickly can be an important part of growth and finding direction in life. But you know what? I’m less afraid of failure than I am of living a life of endless mediocrity. Most failures are a flash in the pan – that’s what makes them failures. If people would keep talking about it, then it wouldn’t be a failure. It would be popular. It would be worth talking about.

What are you afraid of? What keeps you from creating, from trying something new?

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There will always be voices, murmurs in the back of your mind. There will always be prognosticators. People who know how your next story will turn out, how your next book will fare. How your next business will go.

But no one knows. Not even you.

Consider when the original iPhone was released. Here are just a few of the predictions made by experts in the field regarding the future of this new and fascinating piece of technology:

“That virtual keyboard will be about as useful for tapping out emails and text messages as a rotary phone. Don’t be surprised if a sizable contingent of iPhone buyers express some remorse at ditching their BlackBerry when they spend an extra hour each day pumping out emails on the road.” — Seth Porges, CrunchGear

“Apple will sell a few to its fans, but the iPhone won’t make a long-term mark on the industry.” — Matthew Lynn, columnist at Bloomberg

That makes me smile. And it makes me happy, because no one knows how well your next book will sell. No one knows how incredible your next short story will turn out. No one knows how many people will be reading your blog in a year. No one.

Might as well keep writing. Keep preaching. Keep creating.

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In the recent edition of Poets and Writers, there’s a story about author Andre Dubus III and how difficult it was finding a publisher for his novel, House of Sand and Fog.

When House of Sand and Fog began making the rounds in the late 1990s, it was no easier to place than Dubus’s first two books. The manuscript was roundly rejected by twenty-four publishers…There are now somewhere between 2.5 and 3 million copies of the novel in print.

No one knows where this creativity will take you, this story-telling. Not even you.

What’s stopping you right now?