Parenthood as Improv

Encouraged by some of our discussion in my last post, I wanted to press into the topic of parenthood and raising kids. I never really like the term child-rearing. The word “rearing” sounds like your raising livestock.

Having me share about parenthood might seem like Inspector Clouseau giving a seminar on law enforcement.  

My own girls are only six and three years of age, and so I am really at the beginning of my journey as a parent, moreover it often seems as if my wife is the real professional when it comes to teaching and guiding our girls. I’m so grateful that I can work together with my wife as a team. I have all the respect in the world for single parents, because I could never imagine being a parent without having my wife at my side. Parenthood is teamwork.

So much of parenthood seems like improv. You feel as if you’re making it up as you go. You’re just rolling with the punches. You have one child and you think you have it all figured out. Then you have a second child and you pretty much have to throw out the book.

When my oldest daughter was a toddler we gave her hoisin sauce to eat with her broccoli. It worked out perfectly. She ate her broccoli and learned to love vegetables. We tried doing this same thing with our youngest girl, but instead of eating the broccoli, she would just eat the sauce by itself. You think you have them figured out and then they outflank you.

There is so much advice out there on raising kids. Many experts and authors have one really good piece of advice and really have nothing else to say. What I’ve learned is to take whatever is helpful and useful and throw the rest out the window. If you’re doing something different than the books don’t stress it.

For me the topic of parenthood is really a work in progress. At my old church, children were often minimized and seen as an obstacle to real ministry and living out the gospel. There was no real sense that marriage, family and children were in any way a blessing from God and instead families were seen as necessary burdens.

All of this led us to make regrettable choices. Two to three times a week my daughter was left to sleep over with a babysitter, while we attended mandatory staff meetings until one in the morning. Since we were often stressed out, overtired and unhappy, it was easy to take our feelings out on a little girl who didn’t know better.

I genuinely feel badly for our oldest daughter. During her first four years of life we were at a church that did not value family or children. As parents who were church staff members we were invested in our church life, which is to say that our own daughter usually got the short end of the stick.

Being a parent is hard enough without everything that we experienced during our first 10 years of marriage. If there is any consolation and blessing in our experience, it is that our children have very little memory of our life before. The resilience of our children is a blessing. Although we may agonize at mistakes made and opportunities lost, kids have this remarkable ability to bounce back, especially when they are given lots of hugs and kisses.  This is God’s grace.

When we left our old church, it wasn’t just about us making a choice that was good for us; it was my wife and me making a choice for our children. Is this a place and a culture where we would want to raise our children?

Coming out of our abusive church environment, our entire family found itself in need of spiritual healing. This wasn’t just about my wife and me this was also about our children. From age 2-6 our oldest daughter had serious rage and anger issues. Little things would set her off. She was physically violent and often inconsolable. It was crazy, because our cute little girl with dimples and a winning smile would become a totally different person. As her parents we felt at a loss. We tried everything. We tried being tolerant. We tried having zero tolerance. We tried spanking. We tried time outs. We tried bribery.

I understand that parents dealing with kids throwing tantrums is an old issue and yet we could not help but feel as if there was a spiritual dimension to our daughter’s anger. For much of her early childhood, her parents were stressed out and unhappy at a church where people were supposed to be seeking God and where instead spiritual abuse was taking place. How much of this did she take in? It was a question that we couldn’t really answer, but one we couldn’t help asking. We felt that the battle we were facing was not just physical or emotional, but in fact it was also spiritual.

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. (Ephesians 6:12)

During spring of 2011 our new church the Greater Boston Vineyard was doing their annual Leap of Faith during the Lenten Season.  During this time, we pray in faith, in expectation of what God might do, in those directions where we would like to see God work in our lives.  For our family one of our prayers was about our daughter. We prayed for help and guidance as parents and even more than that, we prayed that God could be present and intervene in the life of our daughter. We also received prayer from our small group.

The change in our daughter was almost immediate. Even during our Forty Day Leap of Faith, we  experienced almost immediate relief. Things gradually got better and our daughter hasn’t had a tantrum or meltdown since July of 2011. While I truly believe that God worked in the life of our daughter, I also believe that God worked in our hearts as parents, so that we could better meet our little girl’s emotional and spiritual needs.

I consider myself to be at least a reasonably bright guy. I have a couple of advanced degrees. I am an attorney and I do work that is professionally challenging and yet despite all of this, in my opinion there is nothing more difficult in life than being a parent. Sometimes you feel genuinely helpless and in the face of that helplessness, all you can do is pray to God for your children.

Proverbs 22:6 reads:

Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.

When Christians read Proverbs they sometimes read this verse as a rule, as if God is telling us that if we do the right things, everything will automatically turn out well. Unfortunately, life doesn’t always turn out this way. Consider the story of Adam and Eve, who enjoyed a personal relationship with God and nonetheless turned from him. In the end, all any of us can do is our best.  Proverbs 22:6 is not a rule, but rather a principle that tells us that if we are faithful as parents and give guidance to our children then more times than not, our children will grow up right.

When I was a child, my own father often used scripture as a weapon against me. Obey or God will judge you!  As a father, he was looking for every bit of authority he could muster. While he had all the best intentions, using the Bible as a weapon against your children is not something I would recommend.

During a parenting seminar at the Greater Boston Vineyard, one of the speakers talked about being a parent and how our lives are really the best example of Jesus that we can show our children because more important than what we say is how we live. I believe this to be one of the greatest challenges as a parent. More than trying to teach my children compassion, my life should show them compassion. What does this look like!? It’s something I am still figuring out.

When I was young man, I would sometimes look at my own childhood and see my parents as hopelessly flawed. It was easy to second guess my parents and judge them for the things they did or did not do. When I became a parent, my perspective on my parents and on parenting totally changed. I realized that as parents, there is no real handbook or playbook. Every kid is different. Every situation is different. You do your best and that is all you can do and then you pray for God’s grace that in the end He will make things right.

Thank God there is grace.

Reflections on Attending Christian School

I am a product of Christian education.

Once my family came to faith in Jesus in the mid 1970′s, my father decided that I would attend Maranatha Christian Academy (MCA) for Junior High School. MCA was founded and administered by Calvary Chapel, a non-denominational church that was ground zero for one of the great modern revivals of our day called the Jesus Movement (this is worth a whole other post, but that is for another time). My parents had all of the best intentions in sending me to Christian school. They were trying to protect me. I was an egg head and they worried that the local public schools would swallow me whole. In their heads, they no doubt worried that I would get hooked onto drugs, or get a girl pregnant. Their minds were a collection of worst case scenarios.

In the end I almost defeated their best effort by nearly getting thrown out of my new Christian school. I was lonely and angry about being placed in a Christian school away from all of my neighborhood friends. My idea of conflict resolution was to stick a fist into someone’s face.

I quickly learned that Christians didn’t tolerate using foul language or even less than foul language. I still remembered getting called to the principal’s office for calling someone “bogus.” A word that my older brother taught me. Only later did I learn that this word meant “phony or fake”, which still didn’t explain why this word was taboo. On another occasion, when a classmate was giving me a hard time, I warned him to stop it. He refused and told me that I should make him. So I did. . .I stuck a fist in his grill, chipping his tooth. For some reason, the principal didn’t buy my logic that this other kid asked for it.

We had weekly chapels and bible class which I pretty much ignored most of the time. One of the characteristics that distinguished my Christian school was corporal punishment. If you were caught fighting you received three swats. If you missed three homework assignments you received three swats. I’ll never forget when one of my teachers could not bring herself to give swats to one of her students. She wept because she wasn’t able to do it, but this unfortunately didn’t bring any relief to the poor kid, who was swatted by another teacher. In their earnestness and their desire to be Biblical they determined that to spare the rod was to spoil the child. I think that some of the worst mistakes that we make as Christians are in the vain attempt to be Biblical.  When Christians talk about being “biblical” this usually means that the hammer is going to fall and that somebody is going to be treated without compassion.

Looking back it’s kind of ironic. My school was administered by a church which grew out of the Jesus movement of the 1970’s.  Thousands of hippies found Jesus and grace at my church, and yet this same church had a punitive unforgiving approach to the education of children (Years after my graduation from MCA they changed their approach to discipline and abandoned corporal punishment).

So, what was the net effect of this kind of discipline? If you’re a kid in a Christian school where things like foul language and violence are effectively banned and discouraged under threat of discipline, does this mean that you will become more Christ-like? Does this mean that you will treat your classmates with respect and compassion? Not really. What I learned then is that kids will evolve according to their circumstances. You learn to be more adult and grown up in the ways that you hurt and exclude others.

I sometimes think that Christians spend too much time thinking about how to discipline and not enough time thinking about how to love. This is a truth that I learned in Christian school and this is unfortunately a truth that I learned in the church. Beating kids every time they make a mistake or three mistakes is not love. This is called abuse, even when the abuse is approved by your parents.

Overall, the educators and teachers at my Christian school were some of the most good hearted and earnest men and women I have ever known. I don’t doubt for a moment that they loved Jesus and that they even loved me. Where they struggled is where all of us struggle as followers of Jesus. What does it mean to live out my faith in the place where I work? It’s a question that I often wrestle with and it’s a place where I have often known failure.

When I joined the Air Force out of High School, I found that Christian school did little to prepare for the world. For me being a Christian was all about rules. Being a Christian was about not lying, cheating, cussing or fighting. While this approach to faith allowed me to survive seven years of Christian education without getting suspended or expelled, it did not really help me in the great big world. I had a clear understanding of those things that were wrong, but I had no idea what I actually believed in.

In retrospect, I do not remember a single message on the Bible or Jesus from my time in Christian school, and yet perhaps strangely, I also believe that the lessons I learned in seven years of Christian education helped me not give up on God entirely.  I know that there are some people who grew up in the church, who were disillusioned and later became atheists or agnostics, but it really never occurred to me that this was the way to go. With time and age I eventually turned back to Jesus and when I did make that swivel turn, it felt natural and right. In retrospect, I cannot help but think that maybe a few lessons about God actually “stuck.”  

As a parent I will likely never send my own children to Christian School. My family currently lives in Boston one of the most secular places in the United States. While I’m always concerned about my daughters welfare I do not have the same sense of fear as my own parents.

In the movie Tangled, the character Rapunzel is raised by a woman Gothel whom she believes to be her mother. When Rapunzel expresses the desire to leave her tower and see the world, Gothel tells Rapunzel all of the reasons why she should be afraid of the world.

This sometimes seems like the way that the followers of Jesus approach the world. It’s all about fear. This world is a terrible place and you need to be shielded from this world as long and as much as possible. I saw this same attitude at my old church, where they discouraged us against having any friends outside of the church.

In the book of John, Jesus prays to his heavenly Father not to take his disciples out of the world, but rather to protect them and sanctify them through the Word.  The model of life that Jesus offers us through the gospels is not one of isolation, but rather it is one of crossing the road and meeting and getting to know “the other.” This same Jesus hung out with a “fallen” Samaritan woman. This is the same Jesus  who shared the parable of the Good Samaritan. This is the same Jesus who had compassion on Syrophoenician woman and her daughter in Mark 7.  This is the same Jesus who seemingly never said, “no” to a party invitation, even if that meant spending time with bad sorts of people like tax collectors, prostitutes and sinners.

Earlier in John 14 Jesus says”

Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.

My prayer for my girls is that God would protect them, but more than that, I pray that God will fill my girls with His Holy Spirit. I want to see God do those greater things through my girls, and while it may satisfy my parental need to protect if I kept them locked up in their rooms or in a closet at church, I don’t feel that this is helpful to them in the long run.

Both my wife and I will do our best to teach our children about Jesus and in the meanwhile I believe that my girls have much more to learn from public school than private Christian school. In public school they will be exposed to diverse ideas and people from diverse backgrounds and children from many different ethnicities and countries of origin. The rarified air of Christian school is not representative of the world at large. I don’t want to teach my girls to be afraid, I want to teach them that He that is in them is greater than the world.

Things Take Time

I’ve been reminded lately that things take time. . .

Not long ago, I shared that my family was praying about the possibility of moving to the west coast.  My wife applied to two different positions in California. We asked our dearest and closest friends to pray for God’s guidance and direction. Well, what has happened since then?

Not much. . .

Keep in mind that my wife is incredibly qualified in her field, so the fact that we haven’t received any response from these employers is at least a little surprising. All of this led me to ask my wife, “How would you feel if they were not interested in your resume. Would you be disappointed?”

She replied, “Well I guess that this might be some indication of God’s will.”

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When we left our old Southern Baptist Church (of fifteen years) and started attending the Greater Boston Vineyard almost two years ago, we were spiritually burned out.  Coming to the Vineyard was one of the best things we could have done.  Here at the Greater Boston Vineyard we were invited to meet a God who plain and flat out loved us, a God who speaks to us and a God who can heal both our physical and emotional hurts. It was a breath of fresh air.

Nevertheless, in the time since my arrival at the Vineyard, I have come to realize that while God is much more alive to me now and present to my circumstances, I am still essentially the same person, with the same hang ups and the same questions. I still wonder about God’s call for my life. I still long to develop deep and close relationships. I still wonder how God can use me.  I do feel as if God is moving me in the right direction with this blog and yet I still find myself asking the same questions.

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One of the big issues for our family these past two years was about forgiveness.  Coming from an abusive church environment we did not want our lives to be consumed by anger and bitterness. The Vineyard was a huge help for us in this area, because it seemed as if every other message touched on issues of reconciliation and forgiveness. Programs like Transformation Weekend and Living Waters were all aimed at helping us work proactively through our emotional pain and hurts.

In my opinion, forgiveness is probably one of the most discussed and least understood topics among Christians Why? It’s because forgiveness can only be understood through the window of hurt and betrayal. At my old Southern Baptist church they would often see unforgiveness, bitterness and anger as a matter of disobedience to God, or matter of factly as in “just do it (forgive)”, rather than see these things compassionately as a response to hurt and pain. What is often missed is the understanding that forgiveness really is unnatural.  Loving your enemy is unnatural. This is what makes God’s love for us so amazing.

Over the last few years, I’ve learned a lot about forgiveness.  Among the many lessons that I’ve learned about forgiveness is that it takes time and that it is often a process. While it involves a conscious and deliberate act, we cannot simply turn a switch on our emotions and feelings. If it were only this easy!

The bottom line is forgiveness sometimes takes time.

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Each of the above thoughts is a reminder to me that sometimes life is about waiting.

In Seasons for Your Heart: Prayers and Reflections, Macrina Weiderkehr writes about the Sacrament of Letting Go. In this devotion she talks about Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount when he tells us to trust in God for our needs.

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? (Matthew 6:25-26)

Weiderkehr shares about this passage from the perspective of an autumn tree. Autumn is one of the most beautiful seasons here in New England, but for the trees it is also a season of loss and emptiness since once stripped of their foliage they are forced to remain in waiting.

Weiderkehr writes:

And then the sacrament of waiting began.
The Sunrise and sunset watched with tenderness.

Clothing her with silhouettes

they kept her hope alive.

They helped her understand that her vulnerability

her dependence and need

her emptiness

her readiness to receive were giving away to a new kind of beauty.

In the end, God does care about the trees stripped of their leaves, as He cares about the wild flowers and as He cares about me.

I love Wiederkehr’s expression, “the sacrament of waiting.” Lately it seems to me that life is a lot about waiting and about emptying. My heart sometimes chafes at the waiting and at what seems the emptiness or bareness of it all.  It’s hard to be empty and it can be an uncertain and uncomfortable feeling. Yet as Weiderkehr reminds me, maybe there is a purpose in the waiting. God can be present in this space as He calls on me to trust Him. This isn’t idle time or time that is somehow wasted. There is a blessing or a “sacrament” of waiting. It’s a place where God calls on me to talk to Him, to slow down, be less concerned about progress and  be more interested in what He is doing in my heart during this season of my life.

Speed Bumps

I feel as if I’ve hit a speed-bump.

Speed-bumps are not necessarily bad things. In my own neighborhood, which has a lot of young families, cars will often seek our street in pursuit of a shortcut. They’ll speed down our little street totally oblivious to the children riding scooters and the young mothers walking with their strollers. I think it would be great if we had a speed-bump on our street. It would slow down the traffic and remind people that they need take it a little more slowly.

When we hit speed-bumps in our life, there is a tendency to see it as a negative. We want to take life fast and furious and anything that slows us down, any setback or hindrance to our agenda is often seen as something bad or even unfortunate. More recently I’ve started to wonder whether speed bumps are God’s way of telling us to consider our choices and to take life more slowly.

Why is all of this on my mind?

Not sure if you’ve noticed, but writing has been coming hard for me lately. It’s not really about any one thing, but it’s fair to say that I’ve hit a speed-bump.

In no particular order here are some of the reasons why writing has been hard for me. . .

1)      My brain feels constipated.  There has been a lot of input, a lot of things I have been reading, but very little output.  You can only read so much about faith and life, before you start asking yourself hard questions like, “What are you doing with all of this?!!”

2)      With us praying about a move, and with resumes hanging out there, it feels as if our life is on hold.  Maybe this is a misguided, but I am just a little reluctant to start new things right now, when there is a strong possibility that I will not be able to see those new things to completion.

3)      Feeling overall “Bleh.” Very little gets a rise out of me these days (with the exception of that guy on the toll road this past week). So much of my writing, has come from my passion, my angst and sometimes even my anger about church and legalism and this in turn has led me to discuss my feelings about forgiveness and processing the past. Sometimes I’ve had to consciously turn down the volume on the anger here, because I felt as if it was ripping me up inside and that the anger wasn’t helping me. I am now finding that I almost miss that passion.

All of this is to say that it feels as if I’ve hit a speed bump. Part of me chafes at the almost involuntary nature of it, and yet part of me wonders whether a speed bump is sometimes God’s way of telling me, “Take it more slowly.”

Would love to have your feedback and thoughts on this. . .

The Super Bowl Blues (or “Losing Stinks”)

I was a little depressed today. It wasn’t really about anything and I’m a little embarrassed to share what has me feeling down.

You see, it’s football. . .

. . .and I am a Patriots fan and this is the day after the Super Bowl.    

More than previous years, I was really into this game. My church was watching the game together on the big screen, but I couldn’t bring myself to watch it with everyone else.  I wanted to watch the game without distractions, moreover if we stayed at home, we could put our kids to bed during halftime and wouldn’t miss any of the action.  I understand that for many people the Super Bowl is a time to socialize. For me, this wasn’t about socializing; this was about watching a football game.

My six year old asked about all of the singers, dancers, bells and whistles surrounding the Super Bowl. Why did they have all of these “extra” things before the football game? I explained to my daughter that this was the “Super Bowl” and that if they did not have all of these extra things, it would just be “the Bowl.” That said, the thing I’ve always hated about the Super Bowl is all the “extra stuff”  totally unrelated to the game.

I have no interest in whatever aging rock star is headlining the half time show.  I have no interest in the lingerie models, babies or dogs that fill the commercials during the Super Bowl. I came to watch a game.  

As a Patriots fan I hoped my team would win and that Tom Brady would have enough fourth quarter magic in his right arm, however as a football fan I expected that the Giants might win a close game. That said, when the game ended and I saw that there was no pass interference call on the final Hail Mary from Tom Brady, I turned off the television. I couldn’t bear to watch the inevitable post game celebration and the crowning of the Giants as Super Bowl champions.

I realize that for some Christians, the very fact I can be this disappointed about “a game,” might seem terribly unspiritual and reflects badly on my character, and yet this is who I am. You see, sometimes I am unspiritual. Sometimes, I put and place my hope on ridiculous things.

This morning we had to tell our six year old daughter that the Patriots lost. Last night before the game she had made a sign that read “Go Go Patriots!” When we told our daughter that the Patriots lost the game, she wondered aloud whether the reason for the loss is because her sign read, “Go Go Patriots!” instead of something else like “Go Patriots Go!” or “Go Patriots!”

We explained to my daughter that her sign in no way caused the outcome of the game and we tried to minimize the loss. To understand our response, you also have to know my daughter a little. My little girl is ultracompetitive. When she plays a game or a sport she needs to win every time. Sometimes, this means that she doesn’t even want to try, because the pain of defeat is too much. So my wife and I tried to explain to my daughter that it was really okay that the Patriots lost. After all, they finished in second place. They gave it their best. They tried hard.

Even as we explained to my daughter all of the reasons why it was okay that the Patriots lost, I couldn’t help but wonder if we got it wrong.

You see, in life there will be disappointments. If you pour yourself into something and you come up short, you will be disappointed. These disappointments are part of competition and life. Instead of forgetting our disappointments, minimizing them or trying to convince ourselves that they don’t really matter, we need to remember each of them. We should remember them, because they are part of our journey and story. Our disappointments and failures will make the victories and blessings in life all the more sweet and significant.  This is the nature of redemption. Grace becomes all the more meaningful, in part because we experience failure, loss and defeat.

Yes, the Patriots lost this year, but there’s always next year. Here’s hoping the Patriots draft a linebacker or cornerback and pick up another wide receiver. After this loss, I’m already looking forward to the next Super Bowl and celebrating a Patriots victory.

The Year of Jubilee

In the book of Leviticus, God sets forth this crazy thing called the year of Jubilee.

Every fifty years, all property was to revert to its original owners and all slaves were to be free. In that fiftieth year, fields were to be set aside for the Lord. Just a little backstory is that back in the day, if someone had an outstanding debt, they would work as a servant to pay off the debt, but in the year of Jubilee, all accounts were to be considered satisfied and servants would be freed from service.

Imagine this happening today. You come home to find a letter from Visa or Mastercard. They’ve cancelled your debt. Awesome!

Now wake up (shaking you), because this will probably never happen to you.

While I continue to contribute to the lottery pool at work, I’m under no illusions that we will actually win the thing. Mostly, I just don’t want to be the lonely guy manning the phones on Monday, after all of my co-workers won the lottery on Saturday.

The reason why Jubilee is on my mind is because we recently paid off  over sixty thousand dollars in credit card debt. It took us around five years but we finally did it. Almost all of our debt was accrued during the first five years of our marriage before we had children. You have to understand that you don’t acquire that much credit card debt in one month or even one year, but instead our debt was the product and culmination of  many poor decisions.

I could probably write a book about all of our bad financial decisions and the lessons to be learned from them. You would cringe, but you might also curiously gaze upon the carnage of our finances. What kind of cars did we buy? Did all of this money fuel some kind of destructive addiction?

While we accrued thousands in debt, I’m sorry to say that we don’t even have a sports car to show for it.

No, instead we made other kinds of foolish decisions. For example, when we planned our wedding, it was expected that every person in our church be invited, regardless of whether we actually knew them. It never occurred to us that financing our wedding on the back of loans and credit cards was absolutely bonkers.

Sometimes the intentions were good. You want to be generous to other people. You want to give money to the church mission fund, because this year is critical to God’s work. I could probably blame our old church for a lot of our financial problems, since much of our spending, was in response to the expectations placed upon us there. Like so many things during that season of our life, we wanted to give a good appearance to the people at church. We wanted to look spiritual and be generous and so we often spent money as if the rapture was happening tomorrow. We were foolish and paid the price. We didn’t set boundaries. While it would be easy to blame others for our financial misfortune every decision was our own.

A scary thought is that our financial situation could actually be much worse. Seven or eight years ago, several people from our old church were encouraging us to buy a house. We didn’t have any savings and we had a ton of debt, but at the time you could buy a home without a down-payment. Thankfully, we realized that any talk of us buying a house was absolutely crazy, given our finances. You probably know what happened next. A few years later the bottom falls out of the housing market and many of those same people who bought homes with no money down, ended up losing everything. Praise God that we had at least that much discernment.

Debt is a terrible thing, because it steals your present and your future. Both my wife and I are professionals in our forties who went to graduate school and we are just now getting out from under the weight of all our debt.

In Proverbs, Solomon wrote:

The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender. (Proverbs 22:7)

Implicit in Soloman’s words is that it’s hard to serve God when we are deep in debt. If you are in debt you are a slave. You aren’t going to make any dramatic changes or leaps of faith in your life, because you need to pay your creditors. It’s like your back in high school again and the entire football team has dogpiled you. You are not going anywhere, until all of that weight is off your back.  

Now that we have finally paid off our credit card debt it feels like we are beginning life again. Possibilities are now open to us. I am again reminded of Jubilee, because in the fiftieth year, when the land reverts back to the original owner, the land is be set aside for the Lord.

 But the field, when it is released in the jubilee, shall be a holy gift to the LORD, like a field that has been devoted. (Leviticus 27:21)

Consider how this might feel. You’re debts have been forgiven and you’ve been freed from a life of servanthood, even after the poor choices you have made. Your land has been returned to you. That’s total grace. You are reminded again that everything you own, even your life, belongs to God.

Jubilee is a reminder that my life belongs to God. Moreover, even despite our many poor decisions, God has been faithful to us. There is grace in this place. Being free from under the weight of our creditors, I feel as if we are now more free to follow God’s purpose.

Lessons on Prayer from my Three Year Old

When it comes to prayer, my daughter wants to be the line leader. What is a line leader you ask? A line leader is one of the most important children in the preschool class. They are the ones at the head of the line when the teachers take the class on a walk. You would be right to think that this might cause some disagreement among the children, and so the teachers, in their wisdom appoint a “line leader”, a “middle line leader” and a “back line leader.” Pretty much every kid in the class is a line leader.

Noah: The Line Leader

My three year old daughter is typical for her age. She is excitable, emotional and opinionated. She has been more affectionate of late, and likes giving you big hugs and tell you how much she loves you. Sometimes it doesn’t matter what we make for dinner, because she will always want something else. In our family, she wants to be the line leader.

When we pray with our family before dinner the result is always a little chaotic with a lot of yelling. Our three year old wants to be the one to start and end the prayer. When we want to hold hands, she wants to clasp her hands together, and when we want to clasp our hands together, she wants to connect elbows around the table. She will talk to God about her entire day. She will pray about playing with her friends and she will talk to God about her bowel movements. Everything that happens in her day is a possible prayer topic and when she ends her prayer, she will yell, “AMEN!” We don’t really mind the yelling, since it was not long ago when she ended her prayers by shouting, “cockledoodledoo!”

We also pray with our daughters before they go to bed. I love praying for my girls. I love to pray that God blesses them and fills them. Our oldest daughter used to be bothered by nightmares and so a common prayer topic was for peaceful sleep and beautiful dreams. Our youngest daughter has a more personal perspective on prayer.

• For the past several weeks, one of her obsessions has been her desire to have a play-date with her best friend. She has talked about it almost constantly. She talks on her play phone to her best friend and using that same phone, she invites us to speak to her friend’s mom, so that we can arrange a play-date.
• For the longest time, she also did not want to start potty training, and when she started, progress was sometimes difficult, which is to say painful and messy.

So when we prayed with our daughters, my youngest would interrupt us and tell us that she wants to pray. She yells to God and prays about wanting to have a play-date and about her progress in potty training. Yes, as a parent who loves order, I would actually like to have the opportunity to pray for my girls without getting interrupted, and yet I love the fact that my daughter wants to pray to God. She likes to pray and she wants to be the one to talk to God, and she wants to talk to Him about everything including playdates and bowel movements. When my daughter prays there is nothing that is out of bounds.

This past week, my wife heard from the mother of my daughter’s best friend. They wanted to schedule a play-date. My daughter’s prayers were answered! In fact, as my wife pointed out, my daughter’s prayers about potty training were also recently and remarkably answered. My wife commented to me that my daughters record on answered prayer is pretty good. She prays for a play-date and it happens. She prays for her potty training and it happens. Maybe this is the “secret” to experiencing God through prayer. You bring everything to Him, regardless of whether it seems foolish, because He cares for you. Which is all to say, that I have a lot to learn about prayer and a lot to learn from my three year old daughter. After all, she is the line leader.

Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. (1 Peter 5:7)

Meat and Potatoes Faith

A few days ago I wrote a post that opened the discussion on our possible move to the West Coast.

This conversation represents a movement in this blog in a more personal meat and potatoes direction. This isn’t me discussing the nature of evil or even forgiveness and reconciliation. Yes, the present discussion is one that touches upon frequently addressed questions (in this blog),  such as “what is God’s calling for my life?” and “what does it mean to hear God’s voice?”  If you are thinking about making a major move in your life, these are good questions to ask, however it also seems to me that the present discussion (about moving to another part of the country) deals with very fundamental and everyday concerns and is therefore more meat and potatoes.

Let me explain further what I mean by ”meat and potatoes” . . .

Once upon a time, we lived in a church where following and loving God was all about “doing” and about being busy. It was a life where grace was sorely lacking and that ultimately burned us out.  Coming out of that life, we needed to become reacquainted with a God who loved us simply for being his children and we had to learn to take life at a slower pace. My default has always been about being busy, but I’ve grown to appreciate that being busy is often just window-dressing. A meat and potatoes relationship with God is often most reflected in the quiet (or not so quiet) and contemplative moments when we are fundamentally ourselves and when we are doing the every day things that take up so much of our day. Our true identity comes out in these moments. Meat and potatoes relationship with God is about how I spend my time at work. Meat and potatoes relationship with God is about the conversations that I have with my friends and about supporting those very same friends.  Meat and potatoes relationship with God is about being a loving and supportive husband. Meat and potatoes relationship with God is about the time I spend with my daughters and about trying to be a good father. Meat and potatoes relationship with God is not necessarily about evangelism, or about preparing Bible study, about bringing people to church or about participating in spiritual disciplines, instead it’s about the everyday things that concern all of us.

The possibility of moving has opened up a whole new discussion between my wife and me. It sometimes seems as if life is stuck in autopilot. You go to work. You raise your kids. I think this is especially true when you’re in your forties and life seems one whirlwind of activity, including but not limited to getting kids to school, work, making and eating dinner, cleaning up, taking kids to their activities, helping kids with homework and getting kids to bed. Now we are considering other questions. . . Where do we want to live? What direction is life heading into? Would it be okay if one of us (me) was unemployed for a season (or two)?

I would love to think that moving might bring me closer to following God’s calling for my life. I could pursue writing full time. My wife loves the idea of moving to someplace rural where she could have a big garden, our kids could play in the yard (without us worrying), and where we could enjoy nature.

Leaving Boston would also be a lot like starting over for us. We’re still in a time of spiritual healing and recovery.  Moving to California would mean starting a new chapter or page in our life and closing the door on the past. We will always walk with the wounds of the past, but if we have our “new start”, then maybe we can be more forward looking and embrace more what God has in store for us in the future.

Once upon a time, moving our family was all about taking part in some grand work of God, such as a church plant or possibly going away on missions. Now in the the discussions of our move, we are discussing more of the meat and potato issues.

Moving would mean a lot of big changes, especially for our children. For the longest time, my six year old daughter complained about going to school. Yesterday when I took her to the school bus stop, she gave me a big smile before getting on her bus. I thought to myself, “Wow, she’s happy to go to school. She’s really happy to go to school. That is awesome.”

Yesterday, I asked my daughter how she would feel about moving to California. She replied that she would be really sad to leave all of her friends. You really have to know my daughter to understand how remarkable this is. Even within the past year, she complained about living in Boston and about living far away from her cousins in California, and now for the first time, she is telling me that she likes it here. She even told me that she would miss the snow.

We also love the Greater Boston Vineyard and treasure our time there. In the two years that we have been in the Vineyard, we’ve experienced personal healing and found lasting friends. Now, I know that there are a lot of good churches out there, and yet I love the whole (Stage Four/Centered Set) approach to faith and following Jesus they have here. I love that our daughter no longer tells us that she hates church and thinks that it’s boring. I love the fact that following Jesus is no longer burdensome or painful, but is now light.

We still are not even close to making any decisions to move, but I have found the discussion helpful. It has gotten my wife and me talking about things that we should have been talking about long ago. It’s pushed us to pray to seek God’s guidance and it has gotten us to seek prayer from our friends. All of this a reminder to me that sometimes following God is not about all of the so-called spiritual things, instead loving God and living for Him is sometimes about how we live out the meat and potatoes moments in life.

This is What Grace Feels Like. . .

I sucked pretty bad today.

Brady’s post game comments said it all. When Brady sucks the Pats usually lose. Their defense has been mediocre or worse all season long, forcing Brady to be exceptional, and so in a game when “Brady sucks” you have to believe that if you’re a Patriots fan your chance at victory is pretty much slim to none.

Like many people in New England I was rooting for the hometown Patriots in their playoff game against the Baltimore Ravens. It was a frustrating and agonizing game which surprisingly ended in a Patriots victory. In the last two minutes of the game, trailing 23-20 the Ravens drove the ball deep into Patriots territory. Joe Flacco was doing what even mediocre quarterbacks do well against the Patriots, namely pass the ball with impunity.

With the ball inside the red zone, on third down Flacco threw a perfect ball to Lee Evans in the end zone, who had the ball stripped by Sterling Moore, a player the Pats had picked up from the Raiders practice squad during the season. I couldn’t believe it, but even still the Pats were not out of the fire. Two plays later Billy Cundiff the normally dependable Ravens kicker lined up for a thirty-two yard field goal that would send the game into overtime. Instead of striking the ball through the uprights, Cundiff shanked it left.

Again, I couldn’t believe it. Even after I saw the fans cheering, I still wasn’t sure that my eyes actually saw the kick go wide left. Check my eyeglass prescription!

My friends and I prepared ourselves for the very worst, but instead of being left to cry about Brady’s interceptions, or the failings of the Pats secondary, we were in total jubilation.  We were totally blown away at this ending.

This wasn’t 2002 or 2004 when the Pats season rode the foot of Adam Viniateri to championships. Even after the famous “Tuck Rule” play, the Pats still had to make plays and Viniateri had to make a kick in the snow. In contrast to those games from years past, this year’s AFC championship was a game that the Pats should have lost. Every conventional wisdom says that they should have lost the game. They turned the ball over three times and Brady threw two terrible interceptions. The defensive secondary made Joe Flacco look like Joe Namath. I am under no illusions. On this night the better team lost the game.

This is what grace feels like.

That is what I told a good friend after the game.  It’s the feeling that comes when you know that you suck and deserve the very worst, and then somehow something wonderful happens.

Please understand that I’m not claiming that this was in any way a miracle or that somehow God heard our prayers for a Pats victory. For the record, I never pray about the outcome of a football game, moreover I have gone this long without discussing Tim Tebow and the intersection of faith and sports, so I’m not going to start now. This is just one Pats fan telling you that when his team won, I was reminded that this what grace feels like.  Grace is something amazing. You can scarcely believe your eyes. You want to pinch yourself, but you don’t want to wake up because it feels so good. You know you don’t deserve something and yet you cannot bring yourself to let it go, because its the most wonderful feeling in the world.

I will enjoy this Super Bowl. Go Pats!

Reflections on the Prodigal (or Thank God that the Older Brother Did Not Have the Last Word!)

Let us return to a familiar story. . .

In the familiar parable of the prodigal son, we find the subject of our story returning home to his father after blowing through his father’s money. He prepares this speech: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.”

“I am not worthy” is what the youngest son told himself, but what he found upon his return was a loving father who looked past all of his faults and only saw his child.

Where was the older son? He was disdainful at his younger brother and angry and disappointed in his father for welcoming his brother back home. For this older son, life had been about working hard and about being better than his younger brother, and now his father turned all of that upside down. 

As the younger son returns home I imagine the look that he might have received from his older brother. He is wandering back to his father’s farm in rags with his head hung low.

His brother stands at his plow, sees his younger brother across the field and cannot believe his eyes. There is no compassion or joy at seeing his brother. He mutters,  ”Unbelievable. That ungrateful brother of mine. How dare he!!??Does he honestly think he’ll be welcomed back!!??”

The look from his older brother would have confirmed everything the prodigal had told himself.

“I am not worthy.”

I have also heard the judgment of the older brother and have heard that relentless inner voice that has told me that I am worthless.

The judgment of the older brother is a terrible thing. Keep in mind that this judgment is coming from family. If a total stranger treats you with contempt it’s one thing, but this is your own brother.

As the older brother would later say:

But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!

Your older brother’s voice drips with with condemnation. His response is a like a spear that rips into your heart, and yet here is a thought that I find both wondrous and beautiful. The older brother does not have the final word.

The older brothers in our life will never have the final world. They will tell us we are failures and will be an ever present testimony of poor character. They will tell us that we are not worthy. They will confirm everything bad that we have ever done and remind us without ceasing about our shortcomings and yet. . .

(T)he father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’

In my life the older brother’s voice rings in my ear, and yet I am left with tremendous gratitude, because the older brother does not enjoy the final word on my life.

The final word belongs to my heavenly father who blesses me with grace, who gives me a fierce embrace, places his cloak upon my fallen shoulders and raises up a party on my behalf.

Why is the story of the prodigal on my mind today?

I was recently reminded of my old church. In my own past, the church which should have been a place of grace and mercy, often seemed to me like a place of condemnation, a place where I could never be good enough, a place where I was unworthy. Thankfully, I am reminded that the older son did not have the last word and I am reminded of my father’s love for me, an unrelenting and amazing love.

Ironically, within the church I have found both the older brother’s judgment and the unrelenting love of the father. It’s a dilemma.

Richard Rohr writes in Falling Upward the following:

So the church is both my greatest intellectual and moral problem and my most consoling home. She is both pathetic whore and frequent bride. There is still a marvelous marriage with such a bride, and many whores do occasionally become brides too. In a certain but real sense, the church itself is the first cross that Jesus is crucified on, as we limit, mangle, and try to control the always too big message. All the churches seem to crucify Jesus again and again by their inability to receive his whole body, but they often resurrect him too.

Never have I known greater disappointment than in the church, and as vulgar as it sounds, at times the church has seemed to me a pathetic whore. And yet as Rohr writes, I have also found great hope in the church, because when we were at our lowest ebb, my family turned to dear friends in Christ for consolation. We  came to the Greater Boston Vineyard and and were able to find  grace and the love of the Father. We were able to again experience Jesus’ resurrection.  In this respect, I have found the church to be a beautiful bride. I will likely never be able to forget the hurt that we experienced in the church, but at this moment in our lives it doesn’t seem to matter as much. In the end, despite all of the older brothers in my life, I have  found the love of a Father who embraces me and very much wants to throw me of all people, a giant wonderful party.

We had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.