Tag Archive - love


Children

June 24, 2010 in REFLECTIONS with 3 Comments

It is said that to have a child is to have your heart walking around outside your body. Think of that imagery.  So dangerous, so fragile.  Our physical heart is behind a rib CAGE for a reason — it is precious.  But we can’t keep our children in cages. All we can do is hope we have gotten them healthy enough to make it out there.

I think my hearts are growing up healthy.  They brought home fantastic report cards and gave me the best Father’s Day I’ve ever had this week.  They each bought (or made) me a card and then wrote down what it means to them to have me as their dad.  I thank God for them and am so proud of them.  Oftentimes when I tell them, “I love you,” they respond, “Love you more.”  Yeah, right…  One day they’ll have kids of their own and they’ll understand.

But let’s not rush things.  The sweetness is now, when they get up in the morning and their hair is a mess and their cheeks are so flushed, and when I hug them they are still warm from their blankets.  They’re always beautiful, but I often think that no matter how long they stand in front of the mirror, they can’t improve on how beautiful they already are when they first wake up.  I have always known that is one of the things I will miss most when they are gone.  Right behind that is how I will miss the smell of my bathroom after three girls have used it to get ready for school — makeup and perfume and girl soap and lavender shaving cream and lotion and warm curling irons.  It serves every day as a reminder of how much they have brought into my life — their sweetness, and joy, and enthusiasm.

And the lessons they teach!  When my oldest, Brittany — now 17 — was very small, I was leaving for my annual one-week getaway with a friend of mine.  Brittany pleaded with me, “Daddy, why do you have to go?”  I said, “Daddy doesn’t want to leave you, but going away on this trip every year helps me come back and be a better daddy.”  Her reply almost did me in.

“I’ll help you be a better daddy.”

I comprehended the deeper and unintended meaning immediately.  ”You certainly will, sweetheart,” I said, as I hugged her and headed out the door, squeezing away tears.  She and her sisters have been teaching me to be a better daddy for 17 years now.

It is said that to have a child is to have your heart walking around outside your body.  I have three hearts outside my body.  My hearts are at band camp today.  They are a gift.

The Shame That Drives Us

June 4, 2010 in GODSTUFF with 4 Comments

By and large, churches are still trying to shame people into right living.  Some of the biggest-selling books on Christian living in the past few years are shame-based books.  Shame-based books are written by (usually well-intentioned) shame-based people who live shame-based lives and preach a shame-based gospel.  You’d think after centuries of the shame-game, we’d realize shame, fear, and threats do not work.  If they worked, the Catholic countries would be the most moral countries on the planet, but they’re not.  If they worked, the Holocaust could never have happened in “Christian” Europe, but it did.  If they worked, Christians would be known the world over for their compassion, their generosity, their love, their kindness, and their openness to people who might think differently from them, but we’re not.

As long as I have been in ministry, my message has always been, “There’s something wrong with the way we’re preaching the message.”  We’re  not getting it, and we’re not getting it on very deep and fundamental levels.  Levels that lead to depths of violence and lovelessness that are stunning to those who are  not Christians.  This is not about shame.  This is not about feeling guilty for anything.  This is not about working hard now so I can know God later.  This is not about earning the reward, it’s about finding that after all our years of trying to earn it, we had it all along.  But shame won’t allow us to take it.

In a Christian world without shame, many pastors would have little to preach about.  In a Christian world without shame, many Christian authors couldn’t find readers.  In a Christian world without shame, many of the people who now flock to our churches to receive more lashes every week would find that the relentless love of God does not demand more of them but less — and then eventually leads naturally and easily to the “more” we are all seeking in our tortured efforts.  But we’re shame-based people.  Taking something we haven’t earned is — well — shameful.  We must deserve it and if we don’t deserve it, we must reject it.  That is why the lavish grace of God, freely available to all people, languishes on the shelf.

I hear regularly of preachers who will not do weddings for couples who live together.  After all, it’s important to stand on principles, isn’t it?  After all, if preachers don’t create those firm boundaries, who will?  But the point of the gospel, the point of the Christian god being a bloodied and naked man hanging on a piece of wood, is that love has no limits.  Love does not seek to divide.  Love does not say, “I care for you, but it’s important no one gets the wrong impression, so I cannot be open to you in the following ways…”  When love is truly love, it dies for the one it loves.  It suffers the humiliation and pain that sometimes comes with love, taking pain into itself and  never seeking to make victims of anyone else.  Isn’t marriage what we want to see, pastors?  Don’t we want to see people making those commitments to each other?  But we stand in judgment over them for living together without marriage, then refuse to actually bring them into matrimony because they live together, and then judge them for living together?  Is this madness?  Scratch that — it really wasn’t a question.  Yes, it is madness.

Love wills the good of the object.  That’s love.  Love wants what is best for the one loved.  If a pastor believes marriage is better than living together, and loves the people in front of him/her, then he/she will seek to “love them into marriage.”  Turning people away because they are wrong (regardless of how strongly we feel about their lives, choices, behavior, etc.) is exactly what Jesus NEVER did.  How do we come up with so-called Christian systems of ethics that not only endorse things that Jesus never did, but that actually claim that our Jesus-less way is the most moral and ethical thing we could do?  Until we can come up with a way of understanding Christianity that actually allows us to love people the way Jesus did, instead of creating systems of excuses for not loving them, we’re missing something so critical that our entire message is in danger of being invalidated completely.  Attesting to this trend are millions of God-seeking and God-loving people who have found the church to be an inhospitable place for them or people they love, and dropped out in pain and frustration.

But this is what shame does, and the only thing shame can do.  Many who can no longer stand the shame and are hungry for love (which, of course, is what the message is supposed to be about to begin with and which, ironically, almost no one denies, even while we continue to teach shame) end up leaving the church.  For those who outgrow their shame-based identity and hunger for love, it becomes difficult to find a Christian church that preaches that gospel.  Those who remain in the church are often (though not always) those who haven’t  yet gotten enough of shame and fear and guilt and are not yet ready to receive grace.

And guess what?  God loves them all.  Because that’s what God does.

In search of “Sandi’s”

May 24, 2010 in REFLECTIONS with 1 Comment

Thank you for the incredibly warm and supportive comments I have received from many of you on this blog, via email, in person, etc., with regard to my last post about the loss of my friend Sandi.  Her funeral is Tuesday and I’m already beginning to think a lot about it, feeling deeply sad, and nervous about how hard that day is going to be.  My wife and I and three other of Sandi’s friends from high school choir will be singing a beautiful piece at the funeral.

Though I hated the occasion that brought us together, I cannot describe the warmth I felt having Beth and Kim and Jeff in my home today.  Three more choir/band friends.  Three more people I love and care about.  Three that I have NOT lost.  Three into whom I will be investing more of my time and energy, more of my prayers, and more of my love.

Losing Sandi has got me to thinking about all my other “Sandi’s.”  Of course Sandi was one of a kind, but I have other people in my life for whom I have very deep affection; people who, if I were to lose them today, I would be devastated — but people who, like Sandi, I do not see very often.  Of course we can’t maintain close contact with everybody (seriously, thank God for Facebook in this regard), but in the coming days I will be thinking about the people in my life who I already love — the people who are most special to me, that I simply do not see that often and want to prioritize spending more time with.

After group practice today, Kim and Beth stayed at the piano and practiced a duet they are doing.  It was an incredibly beautiful piece, but even more beautiful was having them in my home and hearing them sing.  I want more moments like that in my life.  I want there to be fewer dear people to whom my attachment and connection is occasional, however sweet it may be.  I want to spend more time in the presence of people who I love, who know and love me deeply, who never expect me to explain myself, who “get me” and love me for who I am, to whom I am not this title or that title (pastor, professor, counselor, etc.), but just Dave — just a regular guy.

I am never happier than in those moments.  Never.  As an introvert, those friendships that go back all the way to high school and earlier are like well-worn shoes.  They fit comfortably, they don’t need any breaking in, you know just what to expect, and it’s all good.

There’ll never be another Sandi.  But I want to be more intentional about spending more time with the people I love most deeply — while we’re still at least somewhat young and beautiful.  :-)  Pat and Rita Hale, no reason we don’t see you more often.  Mike and Sheryl — more dinners and movies please.  Delynne and Lisa — more time in your presence!  Jeff Jackson — let’s hang out, man.  Kimi — you’re family and you know it, and you always will be.  Beth, what can I say?  I treasure you more than words can express.  Dawn Marra — you’re tops and I STILL haven’t seen you since you moved back to Davison!  Cindy and Corey — maybe only once every summer or two, but let’s keep it going.  Laura – so glad to be in touch with you again!

I guess this is my way of trying to focus on all the people I love who are still here.  But when I do that, I then have to ask myself why I am not seeing you more often, and there isn’t really a very good excuse.  You know what?  Every single one of you — either in choir, or connected to someone in choir.  Seriously, my friends.  Let’s spend some time together.  Let us say a last goodbye to our friend Sandi, and then let us be together once in a while.  When we are together, Sandi’s spirit will be with us.

QUESTION: Who are the “Sandi’s” in your life?

The Only Thing You Need You Already Have

November 22, 2009 in GODSTUFF with 8 Comments

Today I was not the person I want to be.  Come to think of it, I wasn’t that person yesterday either.  I’m tired.  I haven’t been feeling well.  Every time I try to sleep, some noise in the house wakes me up, and God forbid that the maker of the noise should be someone in my family, or she is sure to find herself on the receiving end of something she almost certainly does not deserve.  I have been downright insufferable, like a two year old who gets so tired he cannot sleep, cannot be kind, cannot relax, cannot take directions, and cannot accept the love of those who just want him to be well.  Lately I dread the thought of moving, or trying to accomplish anything.  I simply cannot stand myself.  At least my family can go in the other room and close the door.  I have tried that, but no matter where I go there I am, and I continue to strongly dislike the company.

I cannot accept what I need most.  I get in these funks and I push people away.  I’ll bet I’m not the only one.  Most of us are blessed to be surrounded by people who care about us and just want us well, and most of us get into these dark spaces where instead of receiving that love, we reject it.  We prefer, for some sick reason, our tension and anger and darkness.  God help me that I am such a person, that I have times where I willfully retreat into darkness and illusion instead of allowing those I love to keep me grounded in the truth.  The truth is simply that I am loved.  I am loved more than my wife and children can express to me, and I mean more to them than I even understand.  I am the recipient of the most abundant grace and yet, in the times when I need it most, I cower in shadows, refusing to be loved, even going out of my way to be unlovable.

This is my deepest problem.  It is the deepest problem of nearly all human beings.  We are in various forms of rebellion and refusal to accept our true identity as the ones who are dearly loved of God.

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