Why I Like My First Name Again

Remembering who I am with the Cageless Birds

Right now, I’m back from just trying to find a quiet place outside the house where I could write and think through the week in North Carolina. The brewery near my house that Lisa and I like was too crowded, a couple other places were closed, and the rest were too loud. So, my drive around town ended with me swinging by the taco truck we like in Laporte.

My girls are singing along to Elsa having an awakening of identity with a water horse(?) and some old videos of her parents. Fine. I’ll put my headphones in after this song is done. I mean it’s not the worst song I’ve ever heard. Actually, let me sing this part first:

Show yourself 
Step into your power 
Throw yourself 
Into something new... 

Ok, where was I? Right, North Carolina.

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The first invitation out to A Place for The Heart was from Lisa. She received the same email I did from the Cageless Birds, but she believed this little email invitation was for me and from the Lord. She didn’t know anything further, or really ask Him or me otherwise. She just believed this invitation to spend a few days with a group of men seeking the Lord together was for me. So we set aside the money and believed the Lord for whatever He wanted to bring to me.

I’ll skip over the early morning connecting flights, the sketchy Lyft drive, room assignments, bunk bed navigations with grown men who hadn’t gone to camp in a decade or two or three. Instead I’ll jump right to our first group breakout with Ryan, our group leader, and the five other grown men standing in a dance studio not sure what would happen next.

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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He Holds Me Together, Not Me

He healed me. He healed all of me, and I want to be just like Him.

I’d Love to Smoke Right Now…

It’s perfectly quiet outside, the rain just stopped but the lightning is still rolling over, and I’m completely alone right now in our little backyard. This would even be a good moment for a drink too. But I don’t do that any more really.

I quit smoking right after Lisa found out she oh so wanted to marry me, so almost seven years ago. And yet, I still have the lingering feelings of missing that familiar simple pleasure of a light blue American Spirit lightly crackling between my fingers as I inhaled intentionally. I miss that bright orange glow that would spark on the ground as I flicked the tip of the filter. I don’t miss the stench of the smoke staining my clothes and my teeth and my fingers, but I do sometimes have the fleeting nostalgia of those slow and meditative feelings. I miss the moment the act once filled.

Back then, years and a different life ago, I would find myself absolutely sleepless and filled with every kind of asinine and tempestuous thoughts. Every running thought back then seemed to hold within it some kind of lofty and romantic idillic weight of inspiration and possible creativity. Even my prayers had more to do with my own feelings of insight and the power to drum up holy thoughts. There was no real interest in some kind of Divine Communion, or really any interest in anyone else for that matter. I would think that the flash of a thought would be the kernel that would maybe become a book. Relationships weren’t really a driver, it was about me, my own comfort in my state of moody, and self-indulgent melancholy. So the cigarette was the perfect foil for my own little destructive comforts, and tonight feels like a looking back to that old way…

I can be completely satisfied if I want to be

Who I am presently is an image of who God is and has forever been.

Presently and without qualification, my existence is intrinsically tied to the Lord. How I am in my imagery and in my understanding of who I am, whether I like it or not, will forever have its foundation in the altogether eternal and infinite existence of the Divinely Loving God who is Beauty and Goodness Itself. In other words, as God is so do I reflect Him. And yet I know that I don’t love like He does. I am not satisfied with myself like He is with Himself.

God Reverences You

I have a small cup that sits on the mantle of my fireplace.

It’s a simple ceramic cup with a green glaze, and a cross on the face. It sits next to a couple icons, we use it on Saturday evenings for what we call our “Lord’s Day Celebration.” We usually share a meal with the Bursheks. And as part of the meal, we usually pour a portion on wine into this simple cup and pass it around the table so everyone takes a sip.

It’s a holy thing and we keep it in our living room.

I Can Still Hear Their Voices

Death is not final. You can still hear the voice of the one you love.

Nothing is forever lost, except all which cannot be owned despite our great efforts. Those things we lose whenever we tighten our grip on them. Grab provision, and it’s gone. Fight for attention, and the world ignores you. Demand youth, and you will fear the grave more than any other. But love, and the kind of loves that change men into fathers, is never lost, never forgotten, and not subject to the rhythms of death all of us face. For even in death it lives. Not as a ghost, just a fragment and a shadow of what once was. No, Love lives on in us. Love overcomes death by its voice…

The Dance of Isaiah

Being a Father Who Trusts

I have categories. In certain categories I’m incredibly idealistic to a fault, in others I am pragmatic. And there are others where within me exists a clear cognitive dissonance that I don’t believe will ever be resolved. I don’t care how my daughter sleeps as long as everyone is getting enough sleep. She could sleep well standing on her head and I’d be just fine with it, as long as she slept. I care about food purity and agriculture, but I could eat a Big Mac with a smile.

This system of categories and compartmentalization works well for me. I can disconnect from work on the drive home, and I can give myself to listening to my wife when we take time to consider our life together. But I was terrified the other day, and I realized I had no category for all that was about to happen.

“She was about the same age as your daughter…”

The Desert Church

“If you want your family to be good citizens…go to any church. It doesn’t matter what kind… But if you want your family to know God, then go to the desert.”

The other day, as I was praying, I saw the unusual architecture of a particular building on the office park where I work. My first thought was that with its vaulted ceilings and wide entryways, it could make a really nice church building. The windows along the sides of the building could be classrooms, the central points of the facade could be the upper walls of a sanctuary, and it was right off a major road in Fort Collins and just far enough away from the other churches. I’m not a pastor, but sometimes I think like I think pastors think.

But as I walked away from this office building, I began to think about my community and what we would do if we had such an opportunity. Would we even want something like this? That question opened me up to considering how I would describe my church family. I thought