Build My House With Stone

Just so I can show Your love for me a little bit longer…

There was one night I remember when he took me to the pool house and brought with him a tiny portable keyboard. He sat in the only chair I remember ever being in there. I can’t remember him saying anything to me beforehand, only that I stood in front of him as he played this keyboard and sang with his eyes closed. Nothing else, just him singing to me.

"My heart is hungry
My soul is pure
I want to worship
Like David did"

I can’t recall a single moment before or after my dad sang to me like that. I must’ve been twelve or thirteen, and I probably said something small and non profound, but I don’t remember him having a problem with how I responded to him and what he did. I wasn’t a part of the conversation prior to the invitation and I didn’t help him write the song. I didn’t ask why James or Jessica wasn’t there. In fact, James might have been there and I just forgot it. Knowing James, he probably has his own memory of that night if he was there, but we just haven’t shared it.

There was something about that moment and others like it that have become a kind of iconography for the man he was.

I’ve written about my dad before, countless times privately. I’ve probably shared this story of him taking me to the pool house and singing a song at least a dozen times. And yet, when pain and suffering arises or when loss and trauma find their way inside my house, I remember that moment. I need to remember that moment, because after what I have gone through as of late, I need every father I can find to come and quiet me and tell me they’re proud of me and that I’m a good dad.

I need my fathers to remind me that everything is going to be okay. The girls will be okay. Lisa will be okay. Even if I am in incredible and constant pain that will not relent despite my most sincerest efforts, everything will be okay.

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I need every father I can find to come alongside and quiet me and tell me they’re proud of me and that I’m a good dad.

Lisa and I had a night to ourselves. Well, part of the night.

Raychel had the girls at her house for a sleepover. We saved up for a fancy dinner, and I made reservations. We got dressed up, we took our time with each other. We had these fried oyster sliders. She had the hazel dell petit rubans, which is a fresh made fettuccine and local hazel dell mushrooms. I had the duck breast with a chamomile and date reduction. After dinner we walked through Old Town and watched kids play in the splash park. We then went north on Linden St to get a couple drinks at the Union. I got a jalapeño margarita and Lisa got something with mint in it I think. From there, we walked some more and got some fancy chocolates at a place called Nuance.

After a bit, we got home, watched a movie, ate some chocolate, … , and then went to bed just thrilled with the first night away we’ve gotten in town. The girls were doing great, Lisa was oh so happy, and I went to sleep.

The moments that followed would be best described medically and from the third person. Since my memory and placement of events are so far removed from any kind of objectivity, I’ve included the encounter notes from the ER at Poudre Valley Hospital:

07/2/2022: 3:40am (First seizure)

HPI – The patient is a 36-year-old male presenting with first-time seizure. History per patient EMS and spouse. Significant other states that they were laying in bed when he started convulsing and was unresponsive. States the convulsions lasted 10 seconds approximately. Another 10 minutes passed while she was on the phone with first responders and dispatch before the patient ultimately became responsive. He had a postictal period. There was evidence of tongue biting. Patient is amnestic to events. States he recalls watching a movie last night. He is never had a seizure before. He does have familial history, his mother has epilepsy. He apparently has been on amoxicillin and steroids for an ear infection and URI symptoms. He is awake alert and providing history appropriately but is confused and at times perseverative. There are no other modifying factors or associated symptoms.

History is consistent. He is a lactic acidosis that could be explained by seizure activity. His work-up was unremarkable for underlying etiology. Patient has maintained normal mental status here with no further seizure activity. He was instructed not to drive or operate heavy machinery. He will hold his trazodone until evaluation by neurology. He has been encouraged to establish care with neurology. Return to ED precautions discussed with patient verbalized understanding.

7/2/2022 11:28 AM (second seizure)

HPI – The patient is a 36 y.o. male who denies past medical history, currently on medications for mild insomnia with occasional trazodone and Augmentin for an ear infection who presents for evaluation of seizures. Patient had a seizure last night at 2:30 in the morning. Woke him from sleep. Came to ED. Head CT negative. Labs reassuring. Went home, was not loaded on antiepileptics. Was napping today, wife heard a noise from the other room, she looked in and patient was rigid in the bed with arms extended overhead with fists clenched. Not shaking but certainly unresponsive. Blue in the face. She brought him here emergently for further care and assessment.

According to Lisa, the ambulance came and paramedics pulled me out of the house in a stretcher unresponsive. She had torturous moments to herself and every saint surrounding her with prayers as she drove behind the ambulance not sure who or what she would meet at her arrival to the hospital. She met me, but she has her own stories to tell as she wants to.

After I was released for the second time, I was bombarded with an incredible prescription of medications. Some were to help with the pain from biting through (yes through) my tongue. Others were to stand with brute force against any seizure that dared to attempt itself. This medication for all intents and purposes washed over any memory or cognitive functions I could muster for about two weeks. Only after I began to reduce the dosages did I regain any short term memory. While under the full emergency dosage, everything was either being asleep, being in incredible pain, and being led around in a fog.

Apparently my folks came up and spent the night once I was released. They took the girls for the day and I think they may have gotten KFC for dinner that night. I think I remember seeing something looking like KFC around that time. I’ve been told Pops helped me go to the bathroom once or twice. Also, my mom probably took the girls shopping. However they helped, despite the erasure of it, I appreciate it. Lisa says that just because of the physical trauma my body went through, getting up and going to the restroom was an eight step process.

In a moment, I went from a fully functioning man with agency and courage and resilience to one who was without question in need of near constant supervision and hands on care. I needed to be fed. In order to be fed, I needed someone to first sit me up. There is an unknown number of people who have now seen me naked without my expressed consent. My body fell from the steady progression of 15,000+ steps a day only to be relegated to a state of unconsciousness or insurmountable pain.

Blood, apparently blood was an issue needing to be addressed by others. I wasn’t simply helpless, I was unaware of my helplessness for weeks. And then when I regained myself, all the pain and trauma and overwhelm this trauma placed within the life of my family, I had little to no memory of it whatsoever. In the cheapest comparison, I was like a toddler who kept their parents up all night, but had nothing to say once morning came. I couldn’t even apologize for any of it.

The worst of it was not the actual seizure, or the immediate aftermath of complete dependency upon support from the people I would actually prefer to serve. The worst of it was and has been the pain my body has endured as a result. Because of the severe strain my body was in for so long, my ribcage, torso, and spinal muscles have experienced near constant pain. Either I cracked my ribs or I tore my muscles, or both.

Lisa found me with both arms stretched in front of me in full extension with my body completely rigid, all while I was not breathing. She found me blue and in a kind of rigor non-mortis, and I remained in that position for about ten minutes. This trauma has procured for me a kind of pain that is both constant and swirling in its placement throughout my body.

This pain has brought me to tears countless times. This pain has brought me to the end of myself and crying out for healing and mercy. This pain has marked me and will leave it’s mark on me for some time.

"So I lift my hands in worship
And praise You with my lips
Declare Your power and glory
And bow
Before Your throne..."

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He texted me every day just to ask how I was doing.

• Monday, Jul 18, 8:49pm: “Ice is usually good in the first 24 hours and then heating pads after that. In terms of stretching, pain is your friend, so push it to where you feel a bit of strain and then back off.”
• Wed, Jul 20, 4:52pm: “How are things?”
• Thursday, Jul 21st, 7:35am: “Proud of you.”
• Friday, Jul 22nd, 5:09pm: “Probably the closest you’ll ever come to pushing out a baby :-)”
• Friday, Jul 22nd, 5:12pm: “Kidding aside, as uncomfortable as this may have been, think of the things you have been delivered from. Proud of you and the family. Keep fighting.”
• Monday, Aug 1st, 2:59pm: “Stay with it, Amigo.”

Children don’t choose their fathers; they shouldn’t have to. No infant knows themselves to any degree that would actually allow them to make any kind of decision, and even young children don’t have the judgement to know what kind of person would be best to help them become the person they want to be. Moreover, most fathers don’t choose their children. They have no idea what kind of chaos and weirdness will come their way; they should want to have that kind of expectation. Fathers are not chosen by committee or selected like we select and grade types of material according to their quality. Nope, both fathers and their children are made, and are made in such a way that they only exist because of each other. There is no fatherhood to be had by a man without children. He can be a good guy, a mentor, an uncle or dependable cousin, but he is no father unless he has children who identify as his children.

And yet, Pops had the rare opportunity to decide what he would allow himself to get into with us. Who doesn’t like my mom? I get that, that’s easy. But with that tiny woman came a family made of strong-willed, trauma-hardened teenagers who didn’t know who they were outside of the absence of their father who left all too soon. But there he was, all of the sudden making himself available to whatever kind of relationships we could together handle.

George Henderson doesn’t get the romance and memorializing words like my dad, but that’s because he’s still here. He’ll get all of that when we have to deal with it, but that’s not today. Today he gets the award for loyalty, dedication, “sticktoitiveness,” and quiet unwavering support for my best self. He wants me to be the man I want to be. He wants that more than I do, but that’s what fathers do.

Both fathers and their children are made, and are made in such a way that they only exist because of each other.

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I want to be a good dad; everyone wants me to be a good dad.

When I woke up from the second seizure, I remember being incredibly disoriented. In fact, my recall of this moment was only possible three weeks later just because of the degree of the trauma. As best as I can, I remember a nurse with long grey hair and glasses. I remember all the lights being on in the room, and I remember Lisa crying as she greeted me.

“Hi babe.”

There was already an IV in my arm, I was dressed in a hospital gown, and I remember my mouth being swollen shut. I looked around the room and realized where I was and I began asking questions. “Am I in the hospital?” “Are the girls okay?”

(I can’t fully verify if this is how it went down. Lisa may say otherwise, and I’d defer to her for accuracy, but this feels genuine to my fogged and unreliable memory.)

I may be romanticizing myself here for the sake of the narrative, but that is precisely because I so want it to be true. I want to be the father who, after undergoing life threatening trauma and pain, first asks about his girls. There is just so much of my life that is wrapped up in how I love and lead my family. When I was single I would have months of traveling from sleeping in a bed, someone’s couch, someone else’s bed, another person’s couch, and then back to a bed. After marriage and kids, my heart opened up in way it never could before. Just the practice of being present in loving someone else procured in me a kind of steadiness I didn’t know I needed.

Just the other day, Lisa asked me if I could go back in time and talk to 20 year old me, how surprised who he be to learn that he would one day be a houseplant guy? What would he say when I showed him my watering schedule for my succulents? I said he would be amazed to know that I would have a bed of my own.

Having gone through all the loss and growth and work to become the man I am, I know that my truest self is someone who can love his family well. All the other stuff, like writing and ministry and whatever else excites me, that really falls away from my attention and devotion in comparison to how I feel about taking the girls to Trader Joe’s for flowers and snacks. I have a solid spaghetti and meatball recipe. I know how Lisa likes her tea. I spent months researching couches for our living room, and even now I have a list of potential reading chairs for the girls’ bedroom that I am considering. I’m a dad; that’s the bulk of my lived out identity, sandwich crust removal services and all.

And yet, there is this lurking fear deep within me that I won’t be able to be the kind of dad I want to be. Not just because my ideals are unrealistic, but because I know what it’s like to see a future hoped for become relegated to matters of grief. As I was laying in bed working through all of the events and consequences of the seizures, Lisa gave her best to speak truth and hope with all that I was saying. All until I said, “You don’t know what it’s like to grow up with a sick dad.”

I didn’t want, and I still do not want my girls to have a life where their experience of fatherhood has a primary point of reference with me being sick or incapacitated. I don’t want them having memories of me in the hospital. I don’t want them to have flashes of seeing me with IV’s coming out of my arm. I don’t want Haven giving random people diagnoses of her father’s ailments and treatments as I did. I don’t want Mary to get excited about having a sleepover in the hospital with her dad like I did. I don’t want them to try and have fun with sneaking into the little rooms where they keep the ice machine and apple juices.

And then he died without saying he loved me with the kind of goodbye I know he wanted to give. He didn’t think he had to that day in May, but that was it. We got a little walk down the hallway while I was still wearing my school uniform, and then I left for the night. That was it.

I remember the early years of our marriage being plagued with stress migraines and insomnia. It was so bad, Lisa just made herself comfortable in the girls’ bedroom since I was just incapacitated at night. The early part of Mary’s life was noted with a new discovery of diabetes. She would see me prick my finger as I recorded my blood sugar for the morning. And now, I find myself face to face with the moment where I could have joined my dad in not being able to say the goodbye as I wanted to.

I’m a dad; that’s the bulk of my lived out identity, sandwich crust removal services and all.

Fathers want to know for themselves that their family will be okay. In the same way I check the locks at night, fathers want some kind of assurance that what they do will keep their family safe and cared for. I think that’s why Home Depot and all the others exist: dads want to build their houses for their family. If they can’t build the house, they’ll buy all the supplies and make sure all the smoke alarms have batteries and their daughter’s car’s oil is changed every 3,000 miles. They just want to make sure their family is taken care of.

What if I can’t be the one who builds the house for my family as I would want? What if I have only so much time with these girls and what if my place in their life will be subsumed under memories where they have a hard time picturing my face? Let’s say the worst did indeed occur, and my Lisa was left to lock the doors herself every night?

If it were up to me, I’d build them a fortress where no harm could befall them and they could sleep without fear and discomfort. Lisa would have her gardens and chickens and honey bees. Haven would have an art studio. Mary would have a workshop with saws and hammers and little places where she could store her screwdrivers without having to explain herself to anyone else. I would build it with stone, so people could see my love for my family for generations.

But what if this house isn’t mine to build in the first place?

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A wise man builds his house…

It’s hard for me to now identify as a son, much less a child of God. That’s not because I don’t want to, but there is just so little of the actions and choices of my life that coincide with what I think a child is to be about. My curiosity is mostly gone. I can figure out complexities without immediately asking a question as soon as I feel any confusion. I can make or order food whenever I want and it can be as spicy as I’d like it to be. I can say the words and have a kind of mental ascension to the concept, but do I relate to my lived experience in Jesus and in my family as I did when I was a son? No. I’m the dad now, I’m the guy taking on responsibility as I see the need.

And yet, the seizures happened. Without my permission or allowance, they happened and completely disallowed my once stalwart stance as the person who was to be the most dependable. In a few hours I was brought down to the point of complete dependency, needing breath to live.

I want to be the steadfast man. I want to be faithful and dependable and longstanding. I want my girls to have a kind of image of me where I’m immovable. Whether that’s a romantic memory of me always sitting in a particular chair or having some stereotypical response to them coming inside the house after school, I want something permanent to exist between me and them. The seizures however proved that permanence is just not something to be grasped and held onto. This life cannot guarantee any kind of eternity to who I am and how I love my family. No matter how much I wish it would.

Not only am I not permanent, but my core desire to care for my family is not guaranteed either. There may very well come a time where I can’t protect and serve and feed my kids the way I want to and the way they may very well need. There may be a moment where they have the justifiable expectation for me to love them only to realize the love they need from me is no longer available.

My dad has yet to meet his grandchildren the way I would’ve liked him.

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Let not your hearts be troubled…

Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.” John 14:1-4

When Jesus said this to His dearest friends, He did so right when they believed He was going to establish Himself (and them) as king. He was going to bring peace and restore everything that had gone wrong. He would put the rulers in their places (beneath them) and He would remove every imperial edifice around their houses. Rome would be gone, all their pain would be gone, and He would now show them all that they had been working on had come to fruition.

But then instead of all their work being satisfied as they saw it, He spoke to them with a kind of goodbye that they didn’t understand.

He washed their feet, because He knew they would wash His body. He fed them one last time, because that’s what we do with the people we love before they go; we want to make sure they don’t leave hungry. Everything they thought they were building was about to fall through the floor of their hearts. Everything they thought they were to be about and all that they believed to be their responsibility simply came apart like torn fabric.

It wasn’t until they saw Him again did they understand that everything their lives were to be about was all His responsibility. There was nothing they could do without Him. They couldn’t even breathe correctly as He saw it until He breathed on them. The only thing they could do was believe Him and worship Him; everything else was dependent upon Him. The only response they could give was believing Him.

As I recovered, my dear friend Anne was praying for me. As she prayed, she told me, “I just keep seeing Jesus singing to you. Nothing else, just Him singing to you.”

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If You’re the Builder, Build My House with Stone

You have never failed me. You’ve yet to bring me harm or evil. You have always been good to me and my family. Even when I had nothing to give, You breathed life into me. You rescued me from destruction and death. You saved my life, without question or doubt You saved my life. You have shown me just how strong of a Father You can be. You opened my eyes and shown me your miracles. You’ve healed my body. You’ve healed my friend’s and you’ve shown me a kind of kindness and mercy I can only behold and not fully understand.

You’re beautiful. You see me for who I am. You’re patient with me. You are long suffering and You forgive me every single time I am in need of it. Before I took a breath, You loved me.

You make and keep promises to me and my family. You say I am never alone and that You will always care for me. If You feed sparrows, You will feed my children. If You want to save me, You will move Heaven and Earth to do so. And You will throw a feast when You save me.

I trust You. I trust You to care for me and those You’ve given me. You will build my house inside of Your house. You are preparing a place for me that can’t be destroyed or misunderstood or skipped over in memory, and my friend and my girls will be safe. And You will do this all to show me just how much You love me.

You do love me. You love me with everything You have to love. You love my family. You love that I want to be like You. You love that I want to be a dad. You gave me these kids so I could be a dad. You give me good gifts. You love that I want to build with You. You love that I was to show Your love for me and my family by caring for them. Even when I forget or think myself having achieved something greater than being Your child, You still see me as Your son. You will forever see me as Your son.

You know just what I need, and right now I need to trust You. I need You to build my house with stone just so I can show Your love for me a little bit longer.

"So I'll say
Jesus I love You
I'll say Jesus I love You
Jesus I love You
And my heart will follow
Wholly after You"

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