A most satisfactory day!

Wonderful grandkid time - all day long!  A very nice bike ride.  A beautiful Louisiana spring day, with comfortable temperatures, low humidity, and a refreshing breeze.  Fun at the park (pix on FB).  A fine dinner together.

This may be an example of the worst sort of scriptural misquote, but "Lord, it is good for us to be here."  Like the apostles, I too wish I could pitch tent and remain upon this "mountaintop."

Constructive effect

The most deep-seated wisdom can be expressed in ways that are bizarre and morally odious.  The truth that something must be done about a wrong committed - that it must be punished or amends be made - can lead to vengeful and sadistic acts.  Lives are made miserable by demands for expiation that cannot be satisfied.  Many people twist their whole lives into a futile effort to make up for some great wrong they did.  Such efforts can have a constructive purpose but a destructive effect." - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus - Death on a Friday Afternoon


So, Fr. Neuhaus, you're saying it isn't just me?  I guess can buy that.  But if you're suggesting that the self-judgment I've carried has been destructive in its effects, I think I may have a quibble with you.

I'm not going to delve too deeply into some of my efforts to make up for my wrongdoing; that is due to a combination of fear over what there is to discover there and the good sense of knowing there are some balances that are best left undisturbed.  Our therapy team was thorough about helping make sure we are mostly equipped to properly manage my tendency in that regard.  There really is only one area they might have overlooked, though they did try to at least give it a cursory examination.  If they reached the wrong conclusion, it was by our insistence.  And if we were all wrong, it is far too late.  But the thing is, I happen to believe that effort has proven most constructive in its effects as well as its purpose.

Worth the trip

April 26, 2010 - Ft. Polk, KY


The greeting I received from my youngest daughter at the visitor's center when she arrived to escort us onto post - as she clung to me, refusing to break our initial embrace, at least until I'd removed all traces of the cursory from my hug and fully returned it in kind - was worth the trip.

Hannah's squeal of delight from the neighbors' yard as she caught sight of us - she'd evidently awakened in the morning upset that we weren't here already, then watched the clock all day, anxiously waiting for it to say 4-0-0, because that's what time we were supposed to get here - followed by the dripping wet hugs we received because she'd been playing in the water, were worth the trip.

Nic's unsolicited, "Grandpa?  Me love you," - transformed in our separation from an aloof toddler to a doting grandson - as I sat playing the guitar, not especially "for him" at that moment, but just the two of us present to one another in the room, was worth the trip.

Even Emma's running past me to get to Grandma, with whom she has spent so much more time and so recognized much more quickly - though later she was the first one to come over to play the guitar with me - along with the excited way she kept waving to us, was worth the trip.

Big Nic's appreciation - in spite of the extensive dental work he'd had done earlier in the day! - of the City Barbecue we brought with us for them - and the Crown Royal we enjoyed together in the evening, were worth the trip.

Hearing Cassie and Nic share about their marriage retreat, and Fireproof, and on them having The Love Dare (though I don't think either of them has started it yet), and her enthusiasm for The 5 Love Languages and their determination to nurture their relationship together, was worth the trip.

What abundant blessings, all in one evening!  Thank you, God!!

All naiveté isn't bad!

The second naiveté is an understanding reached on the far side of critical analysis and thinking.  Having come to recognize that things could theoretically be other than they are, we are brought to the perception that they are as we thought them to be, but on the far side of all our questioning, we know in a way that we did not know it before . . . It is surely part of what Christ meant when he insisted that we must be born again, becoming not again childish but, for the first time, childlike.  Eliot puts it nicely in Little Gidding:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

So it is with sacrifice, and so it is with beginning to understand the cross. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon


I thought I'd reached at this second naiveté years ago.  I'd explored the opposite of faith, and found a great emptiness there.  Then I was touched by God's love, experienced the movement of the Holy Spirit within my soul, and thought there was no going back. But that didn't keep me from failing so spectacularly, and so I suppose I've either been experiencing a "third naiveté" this year, or I needed January's mini-crisis of faith to truly find myself in Christ.

I'm discovering that it is an entirely different and joyful and intimidating thing to put away my self-judgment and start to really thrive in God's love.  There's a big difference between, "Oh, I'm such a worthless sack of excrement, isn't everyone - especially God and most certainly my wife - so great for loving me anyway!" and being able to truly rejoice in who I am in Christ. Perhaps now I can quit demonstrating to myself - albeit in far smaller ways - what a "bad person" I am.

The "intimidating" part is that I no longer have an excuse for shrinking away from becoming the man God dreams for me to be.

Who is in charge?

Last night, Fr. Jim Manning challenged us with a simple question: who is in charge of our lives?  It seems to fit this post of last week.

I see it answered in the lives of those whose difficult circumstances are marked by a mysterious peacefulness: a dear friend whose mother calmly passed away yesterday, spared the end stage Alzheimer's devastation that otherwise loomed; a new sister in the Lord who's had to bury three of her daughters due to cystic fibrosis, sharing her powerful testimony of how our loving God ministered to her and each of her dear girls - and to the doctors and nurses who witnessed it - in their last hours in this world.

I see it answered in different ways in my own life.  Yes, I am learning to follow Jesus enough to share how God has delivered me through even my worst moments.  Yet in doing so there remains unknown ahead of me, and it is still a challenge to trust that God's providence will meet our every need.  Too, I struggle to walk in the grace that I believe my Lord would pour more fully into my life.  I have always undercut that grace.  As if to prove my unspoken, unrecognized certainty that I'm not worthwhile, my decisions have reinforced my  unconscious low opinion of myself, over and over again.  I thought that merely being conscious of my poor self-esteem would be sufficient to keep me from manifesting this pattern in my life and allow me to impose my alleged will on my actions.  But I have decades of practice and habit of not walking fully in grace, and now I begin to see that it takes more, and less.  More: trusting in God to fill my lack; less: gutting it out by my own efforts.

For when I am aware of my vulnerability and weakness, and immediately give myself over to God's sufficiency, in peaceful resignation to him I encounter the solution that I've sought for so long.  In this moment, at least, I am finally free to, simply, be.

But only when I truly allow God to be in charge: more of you, Lord, and less of me.

"He bids me, 'Come, and sleep . . . '"

An old man, whose day is done
lies prostrate in the night.
In his left ear, continual ringing;
His right hears the rhythm of his heart.
Together they sing and pound out
The lamentation of his soul:
Potential forever wasted,
Promise unfulfilled,
Union never achieved,
Choices driven by unknown brokenness,
Dreams abandoned.
The song leaves him yearning.
Yearning.

He knows there is an answer.
On the cross, the only Answer.
The lamentation must die.
Thoughts of potential - die.
Mourning of promise - die.
Longing for union - die.
Regret of choices - die.
Unfruitful dreams - die.
Discordant song - die.
Unfulfilled yearning - die.
The very self - die.
'Til naught remains but the Answer,
For only thus can the man live.

Reading entirely too much into a simple dinner?

I'm trying to figure something out.  Tonight, the mrs. has a 6:45 commitment at church.  So here we are, with dinner finished in plenty of time for her to comfortably get where she needs to be, all because at 5:00 she said "oh, it's time to start the grill . . . "  As a result, the thick-cut chops had plenty of time to get done, and everything else just fell into place from there.

So why does that so rarely seem to work when I have to be somewhere?  Is it because I'm not usually here to actually get things started, or to do the cooking?  I mean, all she really did tonight was observe the time, and since I was home this afternoon I took care of the rest.  But I got the impression that she'd have done it if I hadn't.  This makes me wonder if she has some passive-aggressive thing going on?  Does she resent my being gone a couple evenings each week?  I mean, if it's that easy to work backward from when she has to be somewhere to what time the ball needs to start rolling, what keeps it from happening when I have somewhere to be?

Or are my expectations unreasonable?  After all, as I read over it, this seems to be a pretty selfish post . . .