Lessons on Life and Love Found On a 14er

I never knew I loved mountains until I saw them for the first time.  From that point, April of 2008, I began to wonder how I had ever truly lived with out them.  How I had ever learned anything about anything before I set eyes on the most deafeningly beautiful of God's natural wonders.  The stones cry out the glory of the Lord, but especially in the Rockies.

Some of the most important lessons I have learned about life and love and happiness have come through the teachings of these monstrous outcroppings of solid glory.  I learned another one this week.  And it was a big one.

I have hinted repeatedly at the difficulties of the last year.  It struck me recently that this year has been simultaneously the best and worst year of my entire existence.  I married the woman I have been searching for my entire life 371 days ago.  A day earlier a family in the church, a family that had been born, raised, confirmed, married and had their children baptized in the church I was serving, notified me that they would be seeking out a new place to live and grow in the grace of Jesus.  They were leaving because, though they had never left the church for more than the collection of days that was their college education, they no longer felt as though they belonged.  In fact, the were realizing that they were not welcome.  The people who had pledged to raise the husband of this family in the faith, that had pledged to raise their children in the faith, had abandoned them and made it clear they were not welcome.  This was the first family to do this in my time there, but certainly not the last.

This pebble rolling down hill, started an avalanche of issues between myself and the leadership of this church.  As my marriage began, my ministry began its end.  Through 6 and some odd torturous months, my depression and anxiety and pain increased.  Eventually it became too much to bear any longer.  The attacks upon my credibility, my character and my ministry grew so burdensome that I feared my fledgling marriage would fail under the strain.  I made the easiest difficult decision of my entire life.  I decided it was time for the church and I to part ways for the good of us both.  As I stated my purpose, I thought the pain would begin to ebb.  Instead, its flow was renewed in shocking ferocity.  I wanted to quit..everything.

Tuesday morning Megan and I started a trek that has changed us both deeply.  We set out from Grays Peak Trailhead for an 8 mile round trip journey that would take us even further into ourselves.

As with all hikes at their outset, we began with great joy and expectation.  With confidence that all would be well.  It didn't take long for our lungs to remind us that we were entering new territory.  Worthy though the goal may be, the going would not be easy and the way would be rocky, rough and in some places, unforgivingly difficult.  After the first 2 hours, we had cleared the first two thirds of the one way distance and were greeted by the hardest part of the uphill journey.  2 hours later we arrived.  It was in those two hours, that I learned something deep and true about my marriage and its first year of existence.

Megan had never been to the elevation that we had camped at, let alone any of the 3300 feet that stood between us and the summit when we began.  I had been there before, but that was 30 pounds and a lot of life ago.  As we climbed, always together, the going got worse and worse.  More and more, our lungs seemed to be doing less and less with every foot gained.  I kept asking Megan how she was doing, hoping beyond hope that she would say that she was done and we had to turn back.  After a year of pain, every step seemed to be too much.  I wanted to quit... again.  But everytime Megan would look at me and say "I want to make it.  We need to make it.  Let's keep going."  It felt as if she knew what I was thinking.  It was as if we were back in those horrible days at the church.  When she would look at me suffering and falling deeper and deeper into sorrow and she would say to me " This isn't about you.  This isn't your fault.  Please, keep going.  WE will get through this.  We are going to make it."

Megan revealed to me after we had gotten off the mountain that she had wanted to quit too.  But When she was ready to turn it in, I would say something that would encourage her to continue on.  To take another step, no matter how little she wanted to take it.  As we hiked up Gray's Peak, roundly considered one of the easier 14ers in Colorado, I realized why Megan and I were able to truly celebrate our anniversary.  We had been doing this all year long.

As life heaved all that it had at us, as each of us in our turns had wondered if we would ever make it, something kept us together.  When many wondered how we would survive the year we had endured, Someone, kept us trudging and slogging on.  Taking just one more step, because that was all we could think about doing.  Just one more.  Just one more.  Always, just one more.

We have done many of the things you are not supposed to do in the first year of marriage.  We have now left three jobs, moved across the country once, with another huge move in the making.  We moved in with her parents.  As we have counted the tally of the wounds we have taken this year, we find ourselves in awe and wonder at how we have been delivered to the other side of these things, not only in tact, but in a better place than we were when we started 371 days ago.

I have just realized, as I type these words, the reason.

"Again I saw something meaningless under the sun:

8 There was a man all alone;
    he had neither son nor brother.
There was no end to his toil,
    yet his eyes were not content with his wealth.
“For whom am I toiling,” he asked,
    “and why am I depriving myself of enjoyment?”
This too is meaningless—
    a miserable business!

9 Two are better than one,
    because they have a good return for their labor:
10 If either of them falls down,
    one can help the other up.
But pity anyone who falls
    and has no one to help them up.
11 Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm.
    But how can one keep warm alone?
12 Though one may be overpowered,
    two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.

The word of God has been active in out lives, our relationship and our marriage.  Sometimes, even without our knowledge.  This is the three fold cord.  At times in this year long trek, I have been broken, more often than not it seems.  But the bond between Megan and I that was born of the Holy Spirit and forged by the One True God, has kept us from falling apart in the midst of my breaking.  So it was also in the times when Megan was strained and broken.  By a miracle of Jesus, I was strong when she was weak.   

But more impportantly, in the times that both of us were frayed and failing, God, our beloved Father and the giver of all good gifts was their, binding us to each other and providing us the only strength that we ever needed.  His own.  

He is why we can happily and truthfully say that, despite what appears on paper to be one of the more brutal first years of marriage a couple could have, we are more in love and more deeply entwined with each other than ever.  And our hike to Grays was the perfect image for it.  

There will be many more summits in our future, both figurative and literal.  We still have much to learn.  I am certain, however, that we are and will be ready when they come.  I know this because God has tied us together with His all sustaining love.  The only love that can do all things.  That can sustain all things.  That can provide all things.  In this love, we tied ourselves together 371 days ago before God and everyone.  And in this love we will stand for the next 371 and beyond.  

When I married Megan I never imagined just how amazing her love for me could be.  I never imagined how great my love for her would become.  I never imagined that we would have the year we would have together.  I wouldn't wish the pain of this year on anyone, but I wouldn't withhold the deep and true love that has grown from it from anyone either.  

Lone Survivor...A Foul Mouthed and Violent Exposition of the Gospel

So this one is going to be a little different.  I watched a movie I love today.  It hits me right in the feels...over and over and over.  I think I know why now.

If you haven't seen it, Lone Survivor is the heart wrenching, soul cleaving story of Operation Red Wings, a Navy SEAL operation in Afghanistan that began about 10 years ago, June 27, 2005, to be exact.  It was intended to bring retribution down upon the head of a notorious Taliban warlord and his crew is miscreants that had, a week or so prior, murdered 20+ Marines. The movie is gripping, it is beautiful it is horrible and it is overwhelming.  It also tells us some really important things about ourselves, about life and about, I think at least, the Gospel.

1)  Life is rough and rarely goes to plan:
Seemingly from the beginning, this operation had problems.  It was, by SEAL standards, incredibly complex.  There were numerous moving parts, most of which involved the back up units in the case that this mission encountered problems.  The unit of Michael Murphy, Marcus Luttrell, Danny Dietz and Matthew Axelson inserted without incident and completed a successful patrol to their observation post.  They identified the target, Amhad Shah and prepared to execute their mission of capturing and killing him.  This was just about the last good thing that happened.  

While resting and waiting for a chance to reestablish communication with their base, comms were notoriously unreliable in this region due to the mountainous terrain, a group of shepherds stumbled across them.  They were carrying a radio that clearly mean that these "men", one was a young boy, another a teenager, were in contact with the Taliban stronghold in the valley below.  The team argued at length over what to do.  Release the shepherds and guarantee discovery and risk annihilation by the much stronger Taliban force, tie the men up and proceed, while likely dooming them to death or kill them outright and proceed.  Ultimately LT Murphy, the leader of the team, decided to release the men and evacuate as quickly as possible.  They simply were not fast enough.

The military force housed in the village below mobilized with incredible speed and cut the SEALs off from their exit strategy.  Despite continuous efforts to find an escape route after contact was made, the SEALs were effectively trapped.  The fire fight that resulted was tremendous.  Bullets filled the air and the men seemingly could not move with out taking another shot.  In their attempt to escape down the mountain to find fightable ground,  Danny Dietz sustained grievous wounds, was captured and killed.  By this point all of them had been shot more than once and were beginning to question their fate.   They were surrounded, shot to pieces and one of them had been captured and, to their knowledge, would likely be killed.  Everything had gone wrong, as life sometimes or perhaps often does.

2)  They relied on each other, even when all hell was coming down on them.  
This was the first take away that, to me at least, is something the Church desperately needs to recapture or perhaps even learn for the first time.  One of the things that makes the SEALs, and other elite units like them, so effective and so incredibly powerful is their reliance on each other.  Their commitment to each other.  This is demonstrated in vivid and gut wrenching clarity in Lone Survivor.  When all hell breaks loose, these men, who loved each other dearly, repeatedly lay themselves in harms way to save the man next to them after he gets hit.  Dietz gets shot up early in the fire fight, but his friends keep him going.  Keep encouraging him and remind who he is, even though in the midst of a firefight and the initial waves of traumatic shock, this once mighty warrior begins to falter.  They never let him and remind him to stay in the fight despite his wounds and despite his mistakes.  Does this sound like most of the churches you have been to?  Does this sound like many of the Christian men you know?  Or is it instead a culture of gossip and "pick yourself up by your boots straps?"  It is my hope and prayer that you have not experience the duplicitousness and outright abuse that churches can deliver in the wake of a mistake, both miniscule and monumental.

It is my contention and strongly held conviction that the Church is meant to be exactly what these SEALs were to each other.  A place where we do not hide from the reality of the wounds and mistakes but instead we accept them and then bind them up to the best of our ability.  And when they have been bound, to move on and bring the wounded member with us.  Because that person is one of ours.  Is our teammate.  Is our brother, our sister our friend and our family.  That is who the Church is, or at least who it is meant to be.  A team that risks all for our brothers and sisters.  Not a group who shames and abuses.

3) Sacrifice
The ultimate moment in the first act, so to speak, of Lone Survivor is the incredible act of LT Michael Murphy.  With Dietz captured and his men shot to pieces, Murph realizes that there is only one way that his men will survive this fight.  As he tells Marcus what he intends to do, "I need to make the call for back up" he starts unloading his magazines and handing them to his friend and brother.  Marcus, instantly realizing what this means, starts pleading with Murph, his voice catching in his throat.  Murph, with only the bullets remaining in his weapon, starts running directly into the teeth of the enemy fire.  Marcus, trying his best to cover him.  Climbing as fast as he can through a rock fall, Murph attains a high point on the ridge, makes the call for back up and is shot to death while doing so.  He takes the bullets that would have been destined for his men, his friends and his brothers, so that they might live.  Sound like anyone you know?

Obviously, this is also the story of Jesus, and it is a beautiful image of the interposed blood of our Lord and Savior.  So my question above almost certainly brought Jesus to mind.  But in this instance, it is not Jesus that I am talking about.  Do you know anyone who puts their life, their reputation and their standing in the world on the line to protect those they love.  Again, I see this as a devastating absence in the American Church today.  American Christians seem to be much more interested in being theologically correct than in upholding their end of Jesus' declaration and command that we lay down our lives to gain them.   We fight over government actions and who deserves wedding cakes, all the while, millions of people in our nation spend their days hungry and wondering where the next bite of food will come from.  We battle over theological minutia, all the while hundreds of thousands of people live on our streets, many with treatable mental illnesses and addictions.  But instead of binding up those wounds, we shame them and tell them its their fault and treat them like they deserve to be in the situation they are in, or perhaps more alarmingly, that WE deserve our better situation because of some greatness that is found in us.  We have forgotten the phrase "there, but for the GRACE OF GOD, go I."  We count the cost of helping and deem it too much because our budget is too tight.

4)  The Good Samaritan and Pasthunwali
This is the on that gets me every time.  After Murph makes the call, the cavalry comes.  However, because of a logistical screw up, the Chinooks, (great troop carriers with basically non existant defensive or offensive capabilities, come in to a hornets nest of small arms and rocket launcher without gunship support.  As a back up team of SEALs prepare to fast rope out of one of the helicopters, an RPG (rocket propelled grenade) hits its mark and obliterates the vehicle and all who were in it.  The second Chinook barely escapes.  Axelson and Luttrell witness this calamity and within minutes are returned to the knowledge that they are going to die.  Axelson is killed at some point after the crash and Luttrell continues his fight and flight.  He finds refuge in a rock cleft and falls asleep.  The next day he is discovered by an Afghani local.  Marcus is certain that this man is going to kill him or at best capture him and turn him over to the Taliban.  And why wouldn't he?  The US military had been conducting operations in this man's country for nearly 4 years by this point.  Thousands of Afghans had been killed at the hands of the US Military.  Very likely, this man knew and loved some of them.  But instead, he extends his hand to Marcus and takes him to his home.  He feeds him and gives him water.  He gives him clothes and works to bind his wounds.  He has taken in the enemy of his people and cared for him.  But this is not where he stops.  He goes further.  Further than Marcus or really anyone would ever expect.

News travels quickly that Gulab, the man who rescued Luttrell, has taken him in to his home.  The Taliban reaction is predictable.  They descend upon this village that they rule over with an iron fist and attempt to execute the American.  As the machete is preparing to come down on Marcus' neck, Gulab and the other villagers open fire with warning shots.  The villagers outnumber the small group of Taliban that have come to kill Luttrell but as they leave, they promise retribution on these people who have defended an American of all people.  As Marcus is dragged back to his room, gravely injured, he begs to know why these people are protecting him.  Not in complaint, but in utter disbelief.

The reason is Pasthunwali, a moral and ethical code that permeates the Pashtun region of Afghanistan.  It has many points, but the first two are key.  1)Melmastia: a radical form of hospitality that is central to Pashtun culture.  This hospitality is to be shown to every visitor, regardless of their creed, race, family or any other identifying characteristic.  2) Nanawatai: the practice of providing asylum to a stranger and protecting them, at all costs, from their enemies.  It was these two precepts of the Pashtun code that saved Marcus Luttrells life.  The village fought a pitched battle against a strong Taliban force to protect the life of an American soldier who had certainly been involved in the deaths of some of their countrymen.  Many died in the effort to hold out until the US military could come to retrieve Luttrell.

This is perhaps one of the more pressing issues that I have witnessed within the Church over the last week and really for quite some time.  We see people who are in need of asylum.  People in need of love, grace and mercy.  People who are pursued by their enemies.  And what do we so often do?  We ask for their references.  "Are you gay?  Sorry, can't help you until you get yourself fixed.  We have a Scriptural reason to disregard you.  Sorry not sorry"  "Are you hungry and destitute?  Sure we will help you.  But first you have to prove that you are willing to work and arent an addict and wont wast the help we give you.  Oh and you have to start coming to church or we will cut you off."  "Are you...anything we don't agree with?  Well, sorry but we have standards and theological grounds for excluding you and when you can get that fixed, yeah, maybe we will let you be apart of us."

I wasn't expecting to get this out of Lone Survivor today.  I was expecting to have my heart opened and my tears to fall.  I was expecting to see what these brave men went through and get some perspective.  I just wasn't expecting it to be this.

Friends in the Church.  We have some serious work to do.  We need to get ourselves right  because right now we are costing people eternity.  Our desperation to be "right" theologically is coming at the cost of the souls of people we encounter every single day of our lives.  They are our friends.  They are our family.  They are people that have abused and mistreated us.  But in the end, Jesus loves them and so should we, at any cost.

Friends outside the Church.  I'm sorry.  If all you ever learn of Jesus is the way his followers behave, I am sorry.  If the church has shunned you for anything, whether it was your decision or not.  I am sorry.  But also, thank you.   Thank you for being my friend, even though I represent a body of people that can sometimes appear to do everything possible to mistreat and abuse those with whom they disagree.

Hope this makes some kind of sense.  If not, I'd love to talk about it with you sometime.  Whoever you are and whatever you believe.  I promise to protect you from your enemies, to do my best to bind up your wounds, to give you what food and refreshment I have.  Because it is what Christians were made for, even if we sometimes forget.

Jesus, help me to be more like the Samaritan.  To be more like Gulab.  To be more like Marcus, Dietz, Axe and Murph.  But most importantly and above all, to be more like You.

Blessing? No thanks, I'm trying to quit.

So it has been a few days, also known as almost three weeks, since I have written.  There is a very good reason why.  I have been an absolute wreck of a human being for most of it.  I didn't know how to write anything that wouldn't leave most of my few readers wondering about my personal safety because quiet honestly, I was worried too.  I was angry, sad, furious, depressed, sometimes happy, most times despondent.  Its been a rough few weeks.  Why you ask?  I blame Lowe's.

  I have been looking for jobs since we arrived in Asheville.  "How hard could it be?" I asked myself.  Really freaking hard was the answer.

Breweries, REI, Lowe's, Home Depot, Craigslift ads.  I applied to them all and figured people would take one look at my resume and fire half their staff to make room for me.  Okay, so thats not what I was actually thinking, but my reaction to a little rejection would leave most people thinking otherwise.

It started with Lowe's two Fridays ago.  It continued with Sierra Nevada the following Monday and New Belgium that Tuesday.  But really it was all about Lowe's.  If I can't ge a job at Lowe's, what chance do I stand with these other places.  After the Lowe's thing, I knew what was going to happen with Sierra and New Belgium.  I started pondering my existence and my value in ways I hadn't done in years.  Maybe even ever.  And it always came back to this: I can't get a job at Lowe's.

I do want to make it clear, that I don't think less of people who work at Lowe's.  Fine, hardworking and dedicated people.  Almost certainly with better heads on their shoulders and more perspective than I could hope for.  The problem was me.  No, I don't think less of people who work at Lowe's.  I just think WAY TOO MUCH, of myself.  This, it turns out, would be my undoing.

Slowly but surely, as flood waters receding after a deluge, my hope retreated form me.  I began to question our decision to leave Fulton.  Not only that, but my decision to save my self and my wife from the beat down that was the situation at my last church.  I began to long for the days of a steady pay check and the comfort that brought.  And I quickly began to feel trapped and abandoned.  I felt like...Israel in the wilderness.  "Sure was nice building bricks in Egypt.  At least there we had food on the table.  At least there we had a roof over our heads.  At least there..."  This was essentially the complaints of the people as Moses marched them toward the single greatest blessing in any of their lives.  Their complaints and accusations toward God cascading toward heaven just as their pleas and mourning had down before God freed them from slavery.  "Surely," they said, "God has simply led us out of our slavery into death.  He has brought us away form our homes and our work, slave quarters and oppression though they may be, and has abandoned us here."  So it was with me.

But Moses kept speaking to them.  Encouraging them.  God kept blessing them. Manna from heaven and water from the stone.  Unforseen hope in a desolation of epic proportions.  Grace upon grace, even in the midst of rejection from the people.  And so it has been with me.

In the midst of this, my wife has continued to love me, though I certainly don't deserve it.  God has continued to speak to me, despite my best efforts at plugging my ears and demanding I be allowed to sit in the ashes of my life and mourn.

The last two sundays at two VERY different churches, I heard the same message.  We work incredibly hard to say no to God's blessings because those blessings require our desires to die.  I, it seems, was perfectly content to not be content.  I was more interested in my view how how this was supposed to go than the incredible blessing that has been presented to us.  I was relentless in my pursuit of unhappiness.  And God Bless my friend James and my wife for slapping me in the face with that truth.  It hurt.  But every death does.  Even at the bottom of my despair last week, and it truly was as ad as it has been in recent memory, God blessed me anyway.  I got a job.

Its a part time job at Home Depot that pays 9 bucks an hour, a far cry from anything we can actually live on.  But that's not the last job I am going to get.  It is simply the one God gave us to make sure we make it to the next one.

I just realized today what a blessing is upon Megan and I, despite the financial realities I desperately cling to to accuse God and curse this beautiful, incredible life that has been given to me.  I am free from my slavery...at least for as long as I can refrain from returning to my chains.  If history is any indication, it will be short lived, but I will fight it.  I am free to learn and to try new things.  We are free to love each other with out the church getting in the way.

My new goal is to try to let God bless me.  I really am not good at this.  I want to work for everything.  Earn everything.  Be deserving of everything.  This practice of self reliance has led to the sin of self aggrandizement.  For the time being, I think that self has died.  But soon enough it will return.  Soon enough I will lament that life isn't as I PLANNED IT.  At that point i will need reminding that that's good.  In fact that is the best news possible.  For if the life that I have planned is dead, that means that the life that God has planned, the only life truly worth living is ever closer to becoming a reality.

I am blessed.  I have a wife that loves me.   I am blessed.  I have a job.  I am blessed, above all of these things, because the life that I so carefully planned and plotted to create, is falling apart around me, thus making room for the life that My Father, My Savior and My Lord has planned for me from before the foundations of the earth were set.

I died last week.  But I am blessed because of it.  I am alive again because of it.  I am sure I will need to die again.  Maybe even later today when I do a workout comprised solely of running and the pride of my athletic prowess is murdered before my very sweaty eyes.  But I am really talking about my plans.  My plots.  My idols.  The things that I stack up to insulate myself against all blessings and grace.  Because in that end that's what this has all been about.  I don't want grace.  I want earning.  I want to measure up.  I want to deserve it.  But no longer.  Blessed are the poor in Spirit.  May I be that yet again.  Blessed are those who mourn, and Lord have I mourned my own death these last weeks.  Bless me again Lord.  Kill me again too.  Kill that which keeps you far from me.  A castle of solitude and despair.  Built by my own hands.  Knock the walls down.  No matter how painful.  No matter how precious.  Its You or its nothing.

Have We Met?

Megan and I sometimes joke with each other by saying, "Have we met?"  She usually says it when I ask her if she wants to climb some crazy mountain or jump out of a plane with me.  "Have we met?"  Yes, yes we have.  Someday, i will get you to climb that thing with me.  Someday.  I usually say "Have we met?" when Megan asks me about organizational preferences or if I would like to get up extra early (before 9am) to do..well...anything.  Or if she can talk to me about planning our day before I have had any coffee.  Someday babe.  Someday I will do those things.

But in the aftermath of the last few years of my professional life, something peculiar has started to happen.  It honestly happened for the first time about 5 years ago when I was fishing with a dear friend at their cabin in Northern Wisconsin, also known as God's summer house.  I will absolutely never forget this moment.  I think I am still trying to learn from it.  Someday, I suppose.

Greg and I were standing on the pier at their cabin fishing in the dying daylight.  I had been struggling through some incredibly difficult times and was just starting to figure out that I was suffering deeply from depression and anxiety.  I was in the final stages of my preparation for ministry and we started to talk.  He started to tell me how good of a pastor I was going to be.  How kind and intelligent I was.  How well I related to people and would be so good at helping them and leading them.  I don't remember all of what he said because as it continued on for more than the 2.5 seconds I though a conversation listing my virtues should last, I vaguely recall a question I wanted to ask him.

"Have we met?"

I couldn't believe this man, the father of my very best friend, a man who knew me incredibly well, would say such incredible things about me.  I couldn't believe that any of what he was saying was actually true.  "Greg," I wanted to say, "have we met?"

I'm sure this goes further back, but in recent weeks it has come back with a vengeance.

I have been trying to compile a resume for different jobs in the Asheville Area.  Regrettably, "I like mountains a lot" and "beer tastes really good" aren't great resume bullets.  So Megan and I started trying to list my skills.  Her list was really long and incredible.  I'd totally hire that guy.  Totally.  But as I heard her talk about all the things I can do, that familiar question arose again.  "Have we met?"

It took me two days to write 3 sentences of a cover letter that we eventually decided not to use because my amazing wife wrote a full one in a matter of minutes.  I just couldn't come up with a single reason why someone should hire me.

At the conference/ retreat/ life saving respite I recently attended, we talked at length about our identity.  Not in the eyes of others, but in the eyes of the only One who matters, Jesus.  The phrase "remember your baptism" regrettably almost became a kind of punch line.  Remember your baptism.

Remember that you are exactly who God says you are.  Beloved.  That you are exactly who God has called you to be.  A disciple.  A husband.  A father (currently to a fur baby but hopefully to real ones someday.  A pastor, maybe not right now but again sometime.

Back in January, as Megan and I flew home from our honeymoon to Denmark, I started reading a book by Eugene Peterson called "To Run With the Horses."  It was the story of Jeremiah and the hell the people of Israel put him through for simply doing what God had called him to do.   For any of you who know hints about the past year of my life, and really both of my ordained calls, you can figure out pretty quickly why this resonated with me.  But in the midst of all of this hell, Jeremiah was constantly reminded of his name.  Not Jeremiah.  That was the name his parents gave him.  He was reminded of this:

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew[a] you,     before you were born I set you apart;     I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

6 “Alas, Sovereign Lord,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am too young.” 7 But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am too young.’ You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. 8 Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you,"  Jeremiah 1:5-6

This was the name that God had given him.  And Jeremiah never forgot it and never trusted anyone else to name him.  But I do sometimes wonder if, in the midst of his pain and agony over the mistreatment of the very people he had come to serve and to save, Jeremiah ever found himself reflecting on the name God gave him and asked, "Have we met?"  To which God most certainly answered, "Of course we have Jeremiah.  I knew you before you were even you." 

I sincerely doubt I will be able to kick this nasty habit of not believing the good things people say any time soon.  It is about as ingrained in me as my love for mountains at this point.  But that doesn't mean I won't start trying to hear the truth.  Trying, with all of my strength, to remember the name God has given me.  Prophet.  Evangelist.  Husband.  Mountain man (Okay maybe that one is mine, but God has to be behind that some how). 

 I will try with all of my strength and then I will rely on God's power when that inevitably fails,  Because int he end that is what maintained and supported Jeremiah.  Not his iron clad will, but the eternal will of the Lord of the Universe fully dwelling in his heart and in his life.  In every breath and in every thought, word and deed.  Someday.  

Someday I will no longer think, "Have we met?" when God, family and friends speak well of me.  Someday, I might even say, "you missed a few things."  Someday.  


This might seem a bit self serving, but if you feel so inclined, leave a comment with something you know about me.  Something I am good at or that makes me who I am, from your experience of me at least.  Megan said I should do this and my utter reluctance probably means she is right.  

He Makes Beautiful Things

Out of us...even me. 

This song has been drumming through my brain for two weeks.  Maybe it will convince me soon.  For your viewing and listening pleasure: Beautiful Things

This paltry artistic styling brought to you by listening to this song on repeat.  Enjoy.  

We're Not In Kansas Anymore...

But we are in Asheville for the foreseeable future.  I'm still not sure my brain has fully accepted the fact that I will not be going back to Fulton, IL anytime soon.  Most likely not until we either have to find new renters or sell the house finally.  I am however, certain that this is going to be an adjustment.
Don't get me wrong, I am 1000% certain that leaving Fulton as fast as we could possibly do so was the best decision we could have made in that situation.  I am also 1000% certain that this is going to take some time for me to settle in to.  A friend of mine asked how we were settling in.  I said fine, because that's what you do when people ask that question.  The real answer has significantly more nuance.

I am equal parts excited, terrified, exhausted, energized stressed, happy, depressed, optimistic, anxious, worried and weary.  It kind of depends on the day really.  Today was not a great one and the great mystery of mysteries is why.  I woke up late, ate a good breakfast, had Dunkin Donuts Coffee, ate a good lunch, spent time on the front porch with the dog, read a good book and looked at my beautiful wife, held her hand and kissed her when I felt like it.  But instead of this being a great day, I'm not feeling too hot.  Maybe it's because it was cloudy this morning.  Probably not though.

IN the end it doesn't matter.  This is life and sometimes life is great but our feelings are not.

Here's what I am going to try to focus on: we have entered an incredibly exciting time in our lives, we have each other (even when im a grumpy bum, or perhaps especially then, this gets me through each day), we have family that loves and cares for us even to the extent of opening their home to us for the summer, Tillman, and last and most important, God hasn't forgotten us yet.  Not even when I have been a grumpy bum.  Not even when I have been so panicked that I can't breathe.  Not even when I turned to anything but Him for help.  Not even at the lowest of my lows back in the hellscape that was most of 2010.  Megan has her stories too.  But God never left us.  Christ never left us.  The Spirit never left us.  So even on days like today, when the last thing I won't to do is be happy or hopeful (or maybe its that its the last thing I think I can be), I am going to rejoice and be glad to the best of my ability because God hasn't forgotten us yet.  He won't forget us now.  He will never forget us at any point in our lives nor any point in all eternity.  How do I know this?   Read the two books of the Kings.  If God can send Jesus to save his people after all of that, We are good.

As I was labeling this post, a Scripture bombarded my brain.  Psalm 136.  A passage in which the phrase "His Steadfast love endures forever," is repeated 26 times.  Each verse either demands we give thanks, or lists a reason why we should.  Verse 23 and 24 are the most relevant for today:

"It is he who remembered us in our low estate,
    for his steadfast love endures forever;
24 and rescued us from our foes,
    for his steadfast love endures forever;"

Today, even though I don't feel like it, not even a little, I will give thanks to the Lord of Lords and praise the King of Kings.  Why?  Because I have a woman who loves me, often more than I love myself, His steadfast love endures forever.  Because I have a furry, goofy, 85lb toddler named Tillman who sat next to me the last two months and asked nothing of me but to pet him and feed him and let him chew on my shoes (two out of three was apparently okay), His steadfast love endures forever.  Because in the midst of the pain and torment of the last two years of ministry, God showed me who I really am again and reminded me that what others say about me, or more often what I say about myself, isn't nearly as important as what God says about me, His steadfast love endures forever.  

His steadfast love endures forever.  

Wherever you are right now, say it with me so people can hear you.  His steadfast love endures forever.  

Rejoice and be glad friends, for His steadfast love endures forever.  

More to  come tomorrow, or whenever I feel like it.  

Told you

Tillman is adjusting nicely.  Life is really good right now.  God is even better.