Thankful for Jeanine and Jennifer

Today, July 3, I am thankful for Jeanine and Jennifer, my wife and daughter.

Many people have great minds, while other have great hearts. It is the rare occasion to find people who possess both. Jeanine and Jen are two of those rare people. When you are around them you at once feel they are both kind and strong, willing to give people the benefit of the doubt, while at the same time in-tolerant of bullies and jerks. To be with them is to be with the two best people I know.

Being with them also means that you will laugh. They are both naturally funny and fun. We have often said that no matter what is going on in our lives, we experience a lot of laughter as a family. Jeanine and Jen are the two biggest reasons for that laughter. They are each truly a God-send.

I often have people say very nice things to me about one or both of them, and often the compliments include how beautiful they are. It's always great to hear such nice things being said about your wife and daughter and I will always thank the person for their kind words and tell them that they're right. When the compliment involves their beauty, I always add, "And they're just as beautiful inside." I think that's part of what makes them so attractive to people. God knows life is hard and people can be amazingly cruel to each other. Jeanine and Jennifer are examples of what it means to experience the opposite of hardness and cruelty. They exemplify humanity at its best.

They love me so well. As my wife, Jeanine is more than happy to let me be myself and she has never tried to turn me into someone or something else. At the same time, she helps bring out in me those better attributes, encouraging me to keep growing and not allow others to dictate my personality or personhood. She soothes my troubled mind, makes our home a place of peace and joy, and is my safe harbor. She is a great wife and mother, a great daughter, sister and aunt, and a great friend. If you don't know her, you should.

Jennifer is everything and more any parent could hope for in their child. Good-hearted, strong, kind, capable, a dreamer of dreams and pursuer of them. She has always exhibited wisdom beyond her years. To be honest, I've found myself on occasion a bit jealous of Jen, as I've wished that at her age I would have been that wise and mature. As I've already said, she is one of the two best people I know and anyone who has the privilege of having her for a friend is very privileged indeed.

These two ladies are my two greatest blessings. They make the other blessings in my life that much better. I owe them both so much and am so thankful that I get to make the journey of life with them.

Jeanine and Jennifer, the two best people I know. And I am a better person because of them.

Thankful for July

Today's post is the first of fourteen blogs over a fourteen-day period that will focus specifically on being thankful. I am going to endeavor to articulate my reasons for thankfulness for specific people, events, activities, even dates on the calendar. I've never posted a series of blogs around a single theme, at least not beyond a Part 1 & Part 2 format. So, this is a new approach for me.

The idea to post a series about thankfulness came about simply because last week the thought that this might be a good thing popped into my head. There's been no significant event to catalyze this. Instead, I had an idea and decided to follow up on it. The reason I am beginning the series today is that I knew I wanted to communicate about this over a fourteen-day period, and I also knew I wanted that period to culminate on my birthday, July 15. So, it begins today.

I hope that you will find some inspiration in what creates thanksgiving in me and that inspiration will catalyze deeper thinking on your part that will lead to your own declarations about those things for which you are thankful. Whatever form your declarations of thankfulness may take, to live more thankfully is to be better at living, to be a better human being. If what I write does in fact inspire you, hopefully it will be so that you can in turn inspire others in your own way, through your own example of thankfulness.

With that being said, I am thankful today, July 2, because...

...it's July.

July is my second-favorite month (October being my most favorite). I have multiple reasons for this, but those things that stand out to me the most include:

• July 1, 1979 is the anniversary of my first date with Jeanine. 35 years ago our journey began. That first date was the first of many that month alone, not to mention all the other ones that came along, then eventually engagement and now 32 years of marriage. Lots of memories, lots of moments to treasure. But, that first date is always a special memory. Two teenagers trying to figure out what to say to each other, both of us thrilled to be with each other, but afraid to show it. It's my favorite July memory. 
• July means we've begun the second half of the year and I love new beginnings. It feels like a clean slate has been offered in the middle of the story of the year. 
• July has always epitomized to me all the great things about summer. It seems to be the one month of the summer season that isn't touched by the other seasons in any way (Spring carries well into June, August sees a return of the school-year calendar, which means for students that Summer is over). Be it trips to the beach, the mountains, hearing people talk about their gardens, or just experiencing a feeling that maybe the pace of life is a touch more manageable, July has always been full of good things to me. 
• July means we're moving into the hottest 2-month portion of the year (July & August). I'm not saying this because I love hot weather. Unless I'm at the beach, I don't enjoy it much at all. But, the fact that we've begun that 2-month period means we're that much closer to it being over. 
• The latter part of July sees the opening of NFL training camps, which means another football season will begin soon, which means God's favorite sport is about to return (don't even think about arguing this fact with me...you will lose and lose mightily). Like I've already said, I love new beginnings, including the pre-beginning phase of new beginnings. And, I just love football. 
• July is the month of my dad's birthday. I love my dad and I'm always glad to celebrate his life. Plus, the fact that he was born is a pretty important part of me having the opportunity to be born. 
• July is also the month of my own birthday. I'll be 54 years-old this month. I've never been one who avoids discussion of my age or who gets down about getting older. I love the fact that I'm getting older and my birthday is a great reminder of what my journey has been to this point, and I am filled with hope that the journey ahead will a great one. 

I am thankful for July. I am thankful for many other things as well. I'll share another of those things with you tomorrow. 

Peace. 

A new dawn...

In a recent interview, the actress Susan Sarandon talked rather in-depth about where she's been in her life, where she is now, as well as where she feels herself headed in the future. During the interview she brought up a tattoo she's recently gotten to remind her to be focused on today, as well as to keep looking forward. The letters "ANDAND" are tattooed around one of her wrists. They stand for, "A New Dawn, A New Day."

The power of this message really struck me, so much so that after reading Ms. Sarandon's interview, I walked into our office conference room and in the upper-right corner of our white board I wrote, A.N.D.A.N.D. It is there to serve as a reminder to me and those with whom I work that the opportunities and the challenges are always new. Yesterday was important, but this new day is what matters most.

This specific new day, July 1, is very important to me. It holds special significance for me personally, as well as for the team of which I am a part at Second Life of Chattanooga. On the personal side, I love the month of July and all that it represents (more on that in tomorrow's post). On the Second Life side, today we begin a new chapter in our organizational evolution, one that initially seems far more full of challenges than it does opportunities.

But, the opportunities are there, some clearly seen, some more hidden. If we're both honest and hopeful, the opportunities are probably more numerous than the challenges. Being willing to welcome and step boldly into each new dawn, each new day is probably one way we are able to see the opportunities more clearly. Hopefully, the clearer the opportunities, the less daunting the challenges.

My motivation in writing this is not about giving you some toothless, "you can do it," "your best life now," rah-rah speech. Life is hard. Sometimes it's impossibly hard. Those who deny life's challenges and pain live in dangerous self-delusion, of no use to themselves or others. But life can also be beautiful, thrilling, sacred. And whatever the challenges of each new dawn, I believe beauty, thrill and sacredness are also available each time the sun breaks over the horizon.

As if on cue, while I am writing this, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" by the late, great Eva Cassidy is playing on my iTunes station (if you haven't heard her version of it, do yourself a favor and listen to it...now). I'll have to admit, given the number of times and ways that song has been covered, it can often come off cheesy and cliche. But, I've always loved Eva's interpretation of it. And, since I'm writing this post as a new dawn and day is literally breaking, maybe the song is a gift, sent to me (and you) as a reminder that often times the new dawn and day is in itself the rainbow, another sign post that although the night can be full of weeping, joy arrives with the morning.

Challenges, fears, crises, deep disappointments...opportunities, hopes, dreams, life-changing successes. They arrive side-by-side with each new dawn. In the middle of both the challenges and opportunities is our freedom to choose. To choose to step into the opportunities is not a denial of the challenges, but instead a declaration. In doing so I declare that the opportunity of the new dawn and day is to live fully alive, fully myself, fully hopeful. That's a tall order, but a worthy one.

And it's certainly worth waking up for.

Meaningful

I spend most of my working days in meetings. I have said many times that it's a good thing that I have such a high tolerance for meetings, because God knows my job requires it. One of my challenges is to go from one meeting to the next and not regard them as things to get through as opposed to what they most often are...the opportunity to create or deepen a connection with a person or a group so that the on-going fight against sex trafficking in our city and area moves forward.

This is work I never imagined myself doing, but at the same time seems to make perfect sense given the twists and turns of my journey. Some years ago I began voicing my desire to do "meaningful work about meaningful things." My work previous to being called into the mission of Second Life of Chattanooga was too often not meaningful enough, filled with too much empty space of activities that made little to no mark on the wider community. Those moments when the work did seem meaningful and transformative (both for others and myself) came too few and far between, making the empty spaces that much harder to take.

That is no longer the case. Even during the meeting-filled days (which describes most of my days) I am reminded what is at stake in each of those meetings...someone's life, even if it is a someone those of us in the meeting have not yet met. The restoration of the image of God. The stolen humanity of individuals. The stolen humanity of all of us. Meaningful things.

Sometimes these meetings are with people who are deeply connected to faith-based initiatives (given the fact that I live in the buckle of the Bible Belt, this is a pretty common occurrence). From time to time the person or persons with whom I've been meeting may ask at the close of our time if they can pray for me, our organization, the victims we serve, etc. I always say yes, but sometimes the prayer approach they use can make me cringe just a bit. I'm not embarrassed that someone would pray and I'm glad they would want to pray for me and Second Life, but not every prayer style is best-suited for for every public setting. But whatever the prayer approach, I say "yes," kind of bow my head (eyes typically open) and let them pray whether it is a prayer style with which I'm comfortable or not.

But every once in a while, someone asks to pray for me and I don't care what their prayer style will be, nor do I care what setting we're in. It is on those days that the desire for strength, support and community is too overwhelming to care where we are or how they choose to pray. Recently I was having one of those once in a while days. I knew going into that day that it would be busy and that we had a lot of ground to cover. Then one phone call that morning turned the day on its head and a busy day became a critical day because someone had found themselves in a literal fight for their life and our help was needed. Immediately.

Meaningful work about meaningful things.

By the time I arrived at a late afternoon meeting with representatives from a local church, it felt like the day had been a week long. The meeting was good, with ideas and imagination flowing. Hopefully Second Life has another new partner.

And then as the meeting was wrapping, one of the church representatives asked, "Can I pray for you Jerry?" He might as well have been asking me if I'd like him to give me the winning lottery ticket. I didn't just say yes; I hungrily said yes. I put my head in my hands as if I were wrapping myself in a blanket in the middle of a blizzard. Whatever he was going to say, I wanted him to say it. I needed him to say it.

His prayer was soft-spoken, brief and sincere. It felt like he was pouring warm oil over me. I devoured his words as if I hadn't seen food in a month. I didn't want him to stop.

Meaningful words. A meaningful moment.

We said our goodbyes and I stepped into the next portion of my day. The day was still a stressful one. The person in their life and death fight was still on the edge. Nothing was really different from when I  began the meeting.

Nothing, that is, except for me being reminded of the fact that every moment, in some fashion, is a meaningful one. No matter what our work, no matter the setting in which we live our lives, to do meaningful work about meaningful things is available to all of us, even if that work is something other than what we do for our vocation.

Given those meaningful opportunities, taking a few minutes of pause in order to let someone say meaningful words over us, whether they take the form of a prayer or just encouragement, is vital to keeping us engaged and diligent. And the engagement and diligence is not only about continuing to do the work. It is also about remembering that every life is meaningful, including yours, including mine. With that being true, then they are worth being prayed over. We are worth being prayed for.

I look forward to the next time someone offers me such a valuable gift. Wherever the offer happens to be made, it will be a sacred space. It will be a meaningful time.

From The Middle

Several times I have heard or read that the Chinese word for crisis is the combination of the characters that stand for danger and opportunity. Since I don't speak any of the Chinese dialects, I cannot say for sure that this assertion is true. But even if it is not true in fact, it seems to point to a truth about life.

A political leader on the national stage recently said that it is a shame to waste a good crisis. Given the public personality of this individual, his statement could be taken a few different ways. But he points to a life truth that too many of us miss, or even worse, do our best to avoid. Crisis comes for all of us, almost always unexpectedly, too often frightening and harsh and many times we feel we face it alone.

But I am wondering today what we might learn and gain from the crisis, even as we struggle in the middle of it, asking ourselves, others and the Almighty if we're going to get through this one. I am writing these words from the middle of not only one crisis, but a few crises. There is a huge part of me that just want these struggles to be over, to experience peace and tranquility, that life would just stop being so damn hard. At the same time I know that life is far more "both and" than it is "this or that," and peace and tranquility are not exclusively experienced in non-crisis times, nor are the non-crisis times more valuable or sweeter than the crisis-filled parts of our journeys.

I do, however, currently desire a lowering of the volume of life, to not feel that I'm under siege. All of us probably fall prey to the faulty thinking that we will reach (or should have reached) a place in life where things get easier, where the battles are fewer or at least not so hard, where we can breathe more deeply and feel that at least some part of our life is finally figured out. For me, I would have thought by the time I found myself knocking on the door of my 54th birthday, at least some of the things I just described would be more consistently true. This is not the case.

Life is still a fight most days. Things have not gotten easier and are in some respects harder than they've ever been. Maintaining my faith is a battle. It is hard not giving in to the darker voices that consistently tell me I do not measure up, I can't cut it, if people only knew the real me they'd all walk away (many of them have already)...some days I can quiet both the voices and myself with what I know to be ultimately true, while other days the devaluing voices of accusation and fear are deafening. It seems to be on those days that the voices describing what is actually true are the quietest, if not outright silent.

Many times the devaluing voices are the echoes in our minds of the real voices of those who have said to us (or most times about us, not having the guts or decency to say it to our faces) things that weren't true, but still brought deep wounding. For me, these voices have always come from those who claim to share my same faith, which means often times the community of faith is no source of help, because it is the community that has inflicted the pain. The pain of these words stays with us much longer than we'd like and too many times we're left alone in having to find a way to heal from the wounding words.

But, far too often the devaluing voices sound like my own voice, exactly like it in fact. So, to paraphrase an old 70's-era pop song, I end up finding myself stuck in the middle with me.

I currently have tremendous challenges and changes happening in my work context. Some of the challenges and changes are going to end up being very good things, while some of them show no signs of being good, but still must be dealt with, must be gone through. A certain set of personal relationships have recently proven once again to be toxic and dangerous for me. The more distance I put between myself and them, the more the attacks come. Plus, as I mentioned earlier, I'll be 54 this year. It would be nice to have a lot of this stuff figured out by now. Years ago I had lots of answers. Today I have far more questions.

This is where some may feel I'm supposed to introduce "the hook" that turns the narrative from me baring part of my soul and transitions into the "but here's the bright side of it" portion of the post. I'm not going to do that. This is not because I am devoid of hope, because I am not. Nor is it because I have abandoned my faith (as some have said that I have). Places like this in life are too important, too sacred to gloss over with some well-turned phrase, or even worse, some ridiculous cliche that's supposed to pass for spiritual insight and wisdom.

No, I have too much respect for both you and me to pull that type of stunt. Instead, I felt like I should write not just what's going on inside me currently, but what I'm inside of, in the middle of. My hope is that this post will help someone feel they're not alone in their own middle of whatever life is handing them. Maybe in helping someone else with their middle, I'll find help in my own.

I am in the middle of a lot right now (for you Bull Durham fans out there, think the meeting on the mound that had nothing to do with baseball). It is lonely, but I know that I'm not alone. I hope you will know that too. Life is un-bearingly tough at times. Those are the times that faith, hope and love are needed the most. Whatever your middle is, may faith, hope and love be there with you...and also with me.

Bite marks

Just when you think it's safe to go back into the...

I'll leave it to you to decide what comes after "the." For me it's the space of honesty, openness and vulnerability. Events in the last several years have caused me to be very guarded about expressing what I really feel and think, especially to those from the "faith community." Much of this is due to the fact that the events to which I refer were painful and difficult and were all driven by people of faith, specifically, Christians.

Christians. My people. My tribe. Those who have hurt me the deepest and many of whom consider me to no longer be one of them, or at least not in the way they think I used to be or should be. But what motivates today's post is not about some huge injury (although God knows my family and I have had plenty of that in the last decade). Instead, I've been reminded that the thing that so many Christians seem to dislike the most in other people is their humanity.

That may sound crazy, but throughout my life I've witnessed this. Whether it was being raised in a setting that constantly decried humanity as the source of all sin, even though Ephesians 2 describes Jesus as having created in himself a brand new humanity, or the life-long occurences of watching people's expressions of pain, fatigue, fear or anger be met with either disdain or some ridiculous sounding phrase that's supposed to pass for kindness and empathy.

The phrases always seem to invoke the trump card of God in a way that invalidates the person's expression of pain, fear, etc. To argue with the phrase and the person uttering (or posting) it is to show that your faith is weak, you need repentance, you need to pray, you need any of 50 other things someone who just overlooked your humanity may insist that you need.

Life is not successfully lived through simple incantations or mantras. Life is hard, messy, beautiful, dangerous, wonderful, heart-breaking, exhilirating. And without honesty, life, at least the kind that is true and full, is pretty much impossible. The cornerstone of Christianity is the vulnerability, pain and suffering of Jesus, God coming to earth to reclaim his creation. How puzzling (and tragic) it is that many followers of Jesus today take every precaution they can to minimize or even eliminate vulnerability, pain and suffering, both in themselves and others.

This is not the way of Jesus. This is not faithfulness. Whatever it is, it makes those who dare express their own vulnerability and suffering feel that much more isolated. The body of Christ should be known for the sweetness of its words, not for leaving bite marks.

Please consider this the next time someone takes the heroic step of expressing to you that they're in a tough place. Please stop yourself from giving them some tired,  worn phrase that's supposed to show how spiritual you are, but instead only shows them that you lack compassion and that they are even more alone than they originally thought.

We all have enough bite marks to last the rest of our lives. Too many of those marks have been left by our "brothers and sisters." May all of us who claim to be people of faith begin to be known as people who are slow to offer answers, but quick to extend cool cups of water.

The Next Step

"Use your words. Please use your words." That's what a friend said to me yesterday during a phone conversation regarding a decision I've been contemplating for the last couple of weeks. I had called her to ask for both advice and help. Advice about whether or not to take a particular step and then help to take that step. It is a step that I've spent most of the last 21 months thinking I wouldn't (couldn't) take again. But my friend encouraged me that I both could and should take this step. Her voice is one of several who have talked with me over the last 2 weeks, each of whom giving the same encouragement as did my friend yesterday.

The step is a return to preaching (I actually hesitated just now before I could type the word. I wanted to just type "speaking" instead. I knew that doing so wouldn't be honest). A  return to preaching. Years ago the idea of a "return" to it would have been foreign to me because I would not have been able to picture myself having left it. Over the last almost two years the same idea seemed just as foreign, but instead due to having done it, having been part of "organized Christianity." I grew up in organized Christianity and have spent most of my life trying to make sense of it as a human being, because the two (organized Christianity and being a human being) have seemed pretty incompatible for most of my 53 years.

Plus, I grew up in a preacher's home, so I grew up with an insider's view of the industry of religion, church, whatever you can call it. Feeling a calling to preach in my late teens pretty much scared me to death and I spent the next 17 years avoiding that sense of calling, primarily because I just wanted to be happy. Life in the church, and especially as a preacher, seemed to me to be the farthest thing from happiness I could imagine.

Over time, however, the calling began to feel more like an invitation than a life sentence of misery. So, as a man well into my 30's, I began the journey of moving into ministry, specifically preaching, which led to becoming a pastor. I did that for over a decade. It nearly killed me.

I could outline numerous reasons why the experience almost did me in, but suffice to say the incompatibility between organized Christianity and one's desire/hope of becoming fully human is still alive and well. The more serious I became about my own journey of faith and the process of becoming a human who endeavors to reflect and live out the image of God, the more the gatekeepers of organized Christianity dug their knives into me. The fact that I had no interest in speaking in such a way that fed their self-focused, consumer-driven approach to faith and spirituality only made me more of a target.

So, they drove me out, drove me away. And then after a while I kept myself out, away. Because of my work with Second Life of Chattanooga, speaking has remained a constant in my life, but preaching has been something I considered to be part of my past. Even when a friend asked me to preach at his church this past September, it seemed like a one-off event for me, something that I appreciated but did not expect to happen again.

I realize that much of this has been self-protection, not allowing situations and people who seem dangerous to me to get near me, or me near them. But the past few months have brought about some conversations and consideration that led to the advice I've sought over the last couple of weeks. The conversations, consideration and advice have now brought me to this place where I can write these words, these words where I out myself as not just being willing to preach again, but actually seeking opportunities to do just that. It is my hope that 2014 will be full of those opportunities.

I know that I have been called to do this. I know that I am once again answering that call. I have been given words. I will use them.