One Year

It seems like it should be a bigger deal than this.

One year ago today, my daughter went under the knife for open heart surgery. She was just shy of being seven months old. She had a ventricular septal defect, which is a fancy way of saying “hole in her heart.” We took her down to Monroe Carrell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt May 5, discovered there was a mix-up and the surgery had been moved to May 6, lost our minds for a few hours, showed up again the next day, and handed our baby girl over to a team of extremely skilled surgeons who were given the task of patching her up.

I’m not going to lie and say everything about the road leading up to the surgery and that day itself wasn’t difficult. Because the heart defect was basically stunting her growth and because she was too stubborn to take a bottle, she had to have a feeding tube stuck up her nose for several days prior to the surgery. Another tube, this time of the drainage variety, was inserted into her chest once the surgery was over. She spent about a day in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, and she barely moved the entire time she was there.

All I can seem to remember clearly, though, is this: She had open heart surgery on a Tuesday and was sitting up in her bed by Friday.

The year following that surgery has been a blur. My daughter has filled out, mainly because once her heart defect was repaired she could actually nurse properly (She was having trouble breathing and nursing at the same time.). The scar on her chest has already faded quite a bit, and there’s nothing about her that would indicate anything had ever been wrong with her. These days, we just live life with her like we do with our other four children. We don’t even have anything really special planned for today.

On the surface, then, this day doesn’t seem that different from any other. We’ll always know it is, though. This will always be the day God answered our prayers and made a way for our daughter to be whole again. And that is something this family will store in their hearts forever.

So maybe it is a big deal after all.

Falling Away

I sure do love me some March Madness. Wall-to-wall basketball for the better part of a month. If it’s not being played, it’s being talked about. Nobody mailing it in, every team playing their hearts out because they know it’s win-or-go-home. The best time of the year to be a basketball fan, hands-down.

I used to devote hour upon hour to watching every second of basketball I could during the NCAA Division 1 Men’s Basketball Tournament. I obsessed over my bracket every year, cursing the names of every losing team that made me look foolish for picking them to win. Much to the chagrin of nearly everyone around me, I was a Kentucky boy rooting (for no particular reason) for the North Carolina Tar Heels. Yelling at the television, throwing stuff, biting my nails… Yep, I was that guy.

I say all that in the past tense because I’m not really that guy anymore. I mean, I still watch quite a bit of the tournament, but I don’t feel very emotionally invested in it anymore. I still fill out a bracket, but I don’t really care what my overall record is once the dust is settled. Not only do I not root for the Tar Heels anymore, I don’t throw my support behind any particular team these days. I still care … but, then again, I don’t care. Know what I mean?

Maybe my slow fade from tournament junkie to semi-casual observer started several years ago when I read Alexander Wolff’s Raw Recruits during the breaks in a lengthy trial I had to cover for the newspaper I was working for at the time. Or maybe it began nearly 12 years ago, when my wife and I welcome our first child into the world and our lives and priorities got turned upside-down. Or maybe it was when I realized I was finally older than all of the players (and now I’m actually older than a lot of the coaches,too).

Whatever the case, I found myself sitting down to fill out a bracket this year and suddenly realizing I had no idea what I was doing. Even stranger, I wasn’t really bothered by that. I’m certainly not criticizing anyone still knows the starting five of every team or dresses up in their favorite team’s gear just to watch them on television. If your heart still lies there, I think that’s awesome. Somewhere down the line, mine sort of moved on … and I’m not entirely sure that’s such a bad thing.

All my life, I’ve heard that God will take things out of your life if He doesn’t think they’re fruitful. I’ve always envisioned that as Him having to pry whatever it was I was holding onto from my clutching, angry fingers as I kicked and screamed through the entire process. Whatever it was, it would be something I desperately didn’t want to give up, and He would cause me great pain and discomfort by taking it. After a while, with this mentality, it’s easy to start thinking that Christianity is less about joy and freedom and more about sucking all the joy out of life in an effort to conform.

As with most things in life, though, God needs to change the heart before he change the behavior. Had someone come to me and said, “Hey, you’re really obsessing too much over basketball. You need to stop watching so much.”, I probably would not have responded in a very compliant way. Stretched out over time, though, I saw my time going to other things – writing, kids, friends – that made me happy in my heart. And while I never lost my love for the game, I did lose that feeling that I had to be plugged into it constantly during tournament time.

There are certain things we’ll have to give up in life. For example, if you’re an alcoholic and you’re destroying your liver with booze every night, you will have to give up drinking. Something will have to move the heart away from the liquor store, however, before the body will follow. So from ending sports obsessions to chemical addictions to ingrained behaviors, the same madness is at work. The good thing is, it’s not just limited to the month of March.

Guest Blogging

Many moons ago, when I decided I didn’t want to be a newspaper reporter anymore, I met Kristin Hill Taylor. Kristin replaced me at the paper I was leaving, and she proceeded to do such a great job that most people probably forgot I was ever there. These days, though, Kristin is a stay-at-home mom, publicist, and writer, whose blog – 152 Insights To My Soul – can be found here. She and her husband, Greg, are the parents of two beautiful adopted children, Cate and Ben, so obviously parenting is a high priority for her.

This week, Kristin’s blog is featuring real-life stories from dads who have struggled with the notion that their children need to be perfect. More information on the book that inspired this current thread – No More Perfect Kids, by Jill Savage and Kathy Koch – is available there as well. Kristin was nice enough today to let me share some of my struggles with this issue, so I’ve included the link here. And be sure to check out all the things she’s written. It’s good stuff.

{No More Perfect Kids} Building Faith & Raising Boys

Phase II

“You’ve accomplished one of your goals. I think you can pretty much assume control of this area for yourself.”

No, no, no. That can’t be right, can it? I thought people going through counseling were supposed to be basket cases their whole lives. You know, make a little progress, suddenly go screaming off the rails, one step forward and two steps back, etc., etc. Are you telling me I’m actually doing a good job of thinking positively, and that you trust me enough to keep up efforts at doing this on my own? This feels very, very … weird.

It’s not like I’m 100 percent cured or anything. In fact, the new term for dysthymia (which I was diagnosed with) is now persistent depressive disorder, which, to me, is a much more accurate way of describing the types of feelings I’ve been having for years. They don’t just go away, which is a frustrating thing for a “check it off the list” kind of guy like myself. I want to be done with it and move on, but that’s not how it works. Fighting it will likely be something I’ll be doing for the rest of my days, so it’s sort of a shock to the system to hear someone say, “Yeah, let’s focus on something else now.”

This is where things begin to get complicated and, quite frankly, a little embarrassing. See, I like to focus in on a problem, deal with it, and file it away. Life doesn’t work that way, though. It seems as if no one has just one issue; it’s always one issue that’s the result of a thousand other issues feeding into it. Yeah, I’m depressed, but I’m also painfully shy and socially awkward. So now we move on to Phase II – social anxiety.

From time to time, I’ll read little surveys or sayings or comments from my friends on social media about how they’re really introverts, and I just chuckle to myself and think, “Aw, isn’t that cute? They think they’re shy.” The best way I ever heard social anxiety described is like this: People want to tell you to just get out there, put yourself in the middle of things, face your fears, and you want to say, “Look, the fact that I’m even here right now talking to you about this is me getting out there and facing my fear.”

In some ways, admitting to this problem is more difficult than telling people I suffer from depression. At least you can sort of limit the effects of depression to more of an internal struggle. If you’re good enough, most people won’t even know you’re dealing with it. When you’re socially awkward, though, everyone can see it. Even worse, they can see it and they don’t understand it. A depressed person who is outgoing will at least seem sort of mysterious or interesting. A depressed person with social anxiety just comes off as, well, odd.

If you can sympathize with what I’m saying, you’ve probably heard some of the following words used about you before – backwards, not aggressive enough, weird, awkward, strange, immature. I’d like to say everyone who uses words like that only say them because they don’t understand, but some of them don’t. People can just be plain cruel when you don’t fit the mold, and there are few things in life as unusual as someone who (at times) dreads social interaction. People need people, right?

In her amazing book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, author Susan Cain recounts the story of an in-demand speaker who had such a problem with crowds that he would hide in a bathroom stall after his lectures just to get some recovery time. As odd as that sounds, I totally understood that story, as I have often sought the retreat of the nearest men’s room to escape my fears. To someone with social anxiety, mingling is akin to being sent back to the first day of elementary school all over again: You want so much to make everyone like you, but you’re terrified they’re all going to hate you.

I can’t explain any of this as well as I felt like I could describe depression. It all seems so irrational. Why can’t I just call someone on the telephone without having to psyche myself up for it? Why don’t I just say hello to everyone I know when I see them in public? Why do people older than me still intimidate me? Why do I stress out so much about going into new situations and meeting new people? Why? Why? Why?

Unfortunately, I have no answers to any of these questions. I can’t even begin to explain how difficult this has made things for me. All those buzz words I used earlier? I’ve said them all about myself at one time or another. What the heck is the matter with you? Why are you so afraid? I hate to even give this thing a name. At the same time, though, I’ve realized over the past several months if I don’t face these problems head-on they’re never going to get any better.

Let me just close with a positive story from what I now like to call Phase I. We had some cold days where I live this past month or so, and there were a few days when I would go out at work and start my truck to let the engine warm up before I went home. Somehow, I managed to lock my keys inside the running vehicle one day. I not only had to go back inside the building and call my wife so she could bring me another key, but I also had to tell my co-workers what I had done. It was the type of incident that, in the past, would have caused my shame and temper meters to overload.

On this day, though, I was thankful my wife was out shopping and not far away from where I work. I was glad I had enough gas in the tank to let the truck run until she arrived with her keys. I wasn’t embarrassed to use a little self-deprecating humor with my co-workers, which led to them sharing their own stories of vehicular mishaps. I didn’t get mad. I didn’t feel like God was out to get me. I just dealt with it and moved on … and it felt wonderful.

So bring on Phase II. And bring on the comments from those who know what I’m talking about. I’d love to hear from you!

13 For ’13

I used to be funny. No, really, I did. I used to write all kinds of amusing things, earning me a reputation as … um … that guy … who, uh, wrote … funny things (Okay, so maybe it wasn’t enough of a reputation to earn me a cool nickname…). It was cool. Well, I mean, I wasn’t cool, but it was nice to be able to claim some sort of talent people recognized me for.

As I got older, though, I somehow began to develop the notion that real writers didn’t waste their time on funny things. They wrote depressing literary fiction where con men steal fake limbs from unsuspecting women (“Good Country People,” by Flannery O’Connor. Look it up. Or, better yet, don’t look it up. It’s weird.) or sprawling analytical columns pondering politics and crime and economics or deep ponderings on philosophy or religion. Dave Barry may have won a Pulitzer and had a sitcom based on his life, but odds are you won’t ever hear him mentioned in the same sentence as names like Faulkner or Hemingway or even Grisham or Sparks.

As a result, I’ve found I’ve become sort of heavy-handed over the years. I realized that this week, after I had worked and worked and worked to no avail on a follow-up post to the one I did about Doug Phillips of Vision Forum Ministries. I may finish it yet, but for the moment I’m sort of tired of dealing with it. In my attempt to wring something profound out of myself, I discovered I wasn’t having any fun, and I already have to go through enough experiences every day that aren’t any fun. Maybe it’s time I switched gears.

Since I’m supposed to be doing a better job of being thankful for things anyway, I thought, “Why not try to come up with a list of things that made me happy this year?”. And since 13 For ’13 sounded like a spiffy title to me, I’ve compiled a list of 13 things that made me happy over the course of the past year. This is in no particular order, so let’s jump right in with…

13) The Winery Dogs

Despite my best efforts over the years to cast myself as a musical sophisticate by loading up my music collection with everything from Wilco to Stanley Clarke to Mumford & Sons to Johnny Cash, I always wind up coming back to hard rock and hair metal. When I was in high school, I listened to everything any self-respecting male would be ashamed to have in his possession today – Poison, Warrant, Slaughter, Winger… I even owned a Trixter album at one point, for Pete’s sake. This was also the time of my life I became acquainted with the bass playing of Billy Sheehan in Mr. Big, and I remain a huge fan of his to this day. When I heard he was making an album with former Dream Theatre drummer Mike Portnoy and guitar virtuoso Richie Kotzen, my ears perked up a little. When I heard their first collaboration as the Winery Dogs, I was hooked. Tremendous playing, sky-high singing, and surprisingly good songwriting taking me back to the glory days. My favorite album of the year.

12) Monroe Carrell, Jr., Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt

As a general rule, I hate hospitals. I hate the way they look, hate the way they smell, hate having to be in them. I’ve driven my wife nuts every time we’ve had a child because I always look for ways to sneak out of them. When we found out our then five-month-old daughter had a Ventricular Septal Defect (a fancy way of saying “hole in the heart”) back in April, though, I knew I was going to be spending much more time in hospitals this year than I wanted to. The Monroe Carrell, Jr., Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt told us the wrong day to show up for my daughter’s surgery, then proceeded to be the most awesome hospital I’ve ever dealt with. And an extra tip of the hat here to the Nashville Ronald McDonald House, which was a blessing not only to us but to others with children facing hospital stays.

11) The Basketball Jones/The Starters

I can sum up how I became a fan of these guys in two words: Dwight Howard. As he was busy turning the Los Angeles Lakers 2012-2013 season into an unmitigated disaster, ESPN decided to center every one of its basketball discussions on Howard and his poor fit with the team. One day, I just couldn’t take it anymore and decided to go looking for a podcast to fill the void. Enter five goofy guys from Canada just hangin’ out and talkin’ hoops for about an hour every day. A little of the cavalier attitude that made The Basketball Jones so much fun has been lost now that the show has moved over to NBA TV as The Starters, but it’s still the best hoops podcast out there by far.

10) Marvel movies

Okay, so Iron Man 3 kind of sucked, but even a crappy Iron Man movie is still so much more fun than heavy-handed fare like Man of Steel (which I actually liked, even if the climactic battle sequence seemed to drag on for infinity). Thor: The Dark World brought the goods, and the trailer for Captain America: The Winter Soldier looks tremendous. If Marvel Studios can keep churning out Avengers-level fare, I’ll even be willing to overlook their questionable decision to make an Ant Man movie.

9) R. A. Dickey

So what if Dickey narrowly avoided a losing record and saw his ERA balloon to over 4.00 in his first year as a Toronto Blue Jay? His autobiography – Wherever I Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball – made its way into my hands this year and rocked my world. Sure, it was published in 2012, but Dickey’s story of personal hardship, moral and professional failure, and, ultimately, redemption is the type that will never grow old. If nothing else, Dickey’s book inspired me to work the words “owning it” into my everyday vocabulary.

8) Magazines, magazines, magazines

How deep did my love affair with magazines go in 2013? Far enough that I’ve fished a few out of the trash can at the post office near where I work. I may not read as many books as I’d like to over the course of a year, but I devour any magazine I can get my hands on. I’m especially a sucker for one-on-one, question-and-answer interviews. If anyone ever decides to publish a magazine of just those, I’ll be first in line to get a subscription. Heck, maybe I should start one myself.

7) Social media

That’s right, I said it: I’m a man, and I enjoy using social media. It’s taken me a long time to be able to admit that. A lot of men I know would consider Facebook or Twitter a waste of time. If you’re a writing-minded, extremely shy person like me, though, what better medium could there be to express thoughts and keep up with friends? Just don’t expect to find me on Pinterest. I might actually have to turn in my man card if I ever wound up there.

6) Glasses

Don’t get me wrong on this one: If I could afford LASIK eye surgery, I would go through with it in a heartbeat. I am not a fan of having to put on a pair of glasses every morning to see where I’m going. As I’m also not a fan, though, of attempting to insert small slivers of plastic into my eyes on a daily basis, glasses have suddenly become a more appealing option. I finally gave up on contacts last year in the midst of the spring allergy season, and I finally made peace with my spectacles this year. Transition lenses and everything. My eyes haven’t felt this good in years.

5) Rise of the Guardians

Technically, this movie came out last year. Also, technically, it lost a whole bunch of money for Dreamworks Animation. My family doesn’t do Santa or the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy, so there wasn’t really a lot drawing me to the film when it was released on home video. As my children had seen, literally, every animated movie ever made except this one at one point this year, though, I decided to give it a shot. While they thought it was pretty good, it blew me away. Stunning action and animation combined with themes anyone could identify with. I’ve talked about it so much even my kids roll their eyes when I bring it up now. The blu ray may be going on my Christmas list anyway.

4) Mental illness

This might seem like an odd thing to be thankful for, but I think it’s already been established that I’m an odd type of guy. Being diagnosed with dysthymia was a blessing in disguise for me. I’ve learned a lot about being thankful, weighing my options, and learning how to own the decisions I make. I’ve been able to share on this blog some of my experiences, and that has opened the door to several discussions I never thought I’d be having. I still have my bad days, but at least now I know why I have those days. I’m just praying I can carry what I’ve learned this year with me through the rest of my life.

3) Smartphones

When my daughter was having her aforementioned surgery, I was still using a regular cell phone. Nothing wrong with that, but it seemed like every five minutes I was either having to call or text someone to give them a status report. Plus, there’s not a whole lot to do in hospital waiting rooms these days, so boredom was also an issue. My decision after that to try out a smartphone has been mostly a good one, although I think sometimes I’m getting a little too attached to it. There are times when I go all Gollum and get the thing out not because I really need it, but mainly because I just want to look at it. I expect to begin referring to it as “My Precious…” any day now.

2) Blogging

One day, I’m going to figure out a direction for this thing. One day, I might even learn to make some money doing it. Until then, I’m just going to keep throwing stuff out here and see who stops by to read it. I’m a writer. I may not be making my living doing it. I may not be doing it every day. But it’s who I am. And I can’t think of any better way at the moment to keep in practice. So, sorry, WordPress, I guess you’re stuck with me for a while.

And, last but not least…

1) God

God and I seem to be on better terms these days than we were for a while. I don’t seem to be angry with Him as much as I used to be. I guess when He spares your daughter from heart failure, your perspective lightens up a little. It goes beyond that, though. I don’t feel like He’s ready to drop the hammer on me whenever I get out of line (which is still, unfortunately, something that happens way more than I’d like it to). I’m seeing Him more and more in the bad times. I’m still a knucklehead, and I still get it wrong more times than I get it right, but I think maybe – just maybe – He was expecting that.

So, there it is. Happy (belated) Thanksgiving, everyone. What made you happy this year?

Your Season, My Life

I’m generally a pretty conservative guy. I don’t like roller coasters, don’t dress up in costumes, don’t look for excuses to go camping or fishing whenever the sun is shining. I ride my bicycle on paved roads because I nearly killed myself on a dirt trail one time, don’t try to repair anything without at least two other adults around, and order the same thing at every restaurant I go to 95 percent of the time. Heck, I’m even boring myself writing about this right now.

I have a certain friend, though, who has this rare ability to talk me into doing crazy stuff. He was the one who convinced me to go on the trail ride I mentioned earlier. He also got me to dress up like a pirate one year on Halloween and go eat with him at a couple of local seafood restaurants (He was dressed that way, too. You didn’t think I’d do that by myself, did you?). And one of his most recent accomplishments was convincing me to drive a little over two hours to watch Will Ferrell’s Casa de mi Padre on its opening weekend.

A trip like that obviously requires a little car time, which can lead to all kinds of interesting discussions. I mean, there’s only so long you can speculate on how many ways Ferrell will manage to drop the F-bomb in an all-Spanish language flick (Answer: Approximately two-thousand.). Various topics will get kicked around until at last someone will inevitably ask the other: “So … how are things going?” And that’s when the real fun begins.

On this particular trip, my friend began to describe to me how a certain situation had left him in a state of near depression, a feeling which was somewhat new for him. “I would just sit there in bed in the morning,” he said (I’m paraphrasing here. The hour-and-a-half of Casa that evening pretty much wiped out any exact memories I have of that trip.). “I just didn’t want to do anything. It was like a darkness that wouldn’t lift.”

He then went on to describe how that darkness had lifted over time and how he was thankful for that season of his life to be over with. After listening to him recount his experience, I thought for a moment and then let out a statement I don’t even think I was fully aware I was making: “That season you just described is how I feel every day.”

Subtle, I know. I look back on that moment now, though, as a defining moment in my progression toward seeking help with depression. I kept trying to pin everything I was feeling on some circumstance – my job, my personal relationships, my numerous limitations, etc., etc. Along the way, very well-meaning people were telling me things such as, “You know this won’t last forever. Press in to God. Pray more. Good things are just around the corner. You’ll snap out of it.”

I have no doubt my friend, like millions of other people in the world, went through a dark period and, by the grace of God, snapped out of it. I also have no doubt that 99.9 percent of the advice given to me over the years was given out of love and genuine concern. To be honest, I felt like a real failure because I couldn’t rise above whatever was going on in my head. Actually, scratch that: I still feel like a failure most days because I can’t straighten out. This feeling shouldn’t last this long; I must be doing something wrong.

Welcome to life with dysthymia, friends.

It still feels odd saying that, because even I feel like it’s a cop-out. For now, at least, it’s the truth I have to work with, and it’s an enemy I can formulate a plan of attack against. That moment in the car with my friend made me realize that my dark “season” had gone on for years and wasn’t showing any signs of letting up soon. There are days when I don’t think I’ll ever come out of it. And then there are those other days when I can finally see a little light at the end of the tunnel and not be afraid it’s from an oncoming train.

I think I took my friend by surprise that night, because he had never experienced anything like what I was describing. I don’t think the majority of people in the world can relate to it either. I wish they could, though. Maybe we should all just hop in a big van and head out to see an obscure comedy film a couple of hours away from home. You never know what we might wind up talking about along the way.

The Gospel According To Looper

(WARNING: This post contains major spoilers for the movie Looper. As in, I’m going to be discussing the ending of the movie. So if you haven’t seen it and don’t want to be spoiled, don’t keep reading. Actually, go see the movie and then come back and read the rest. I need all the hits I can get.)

The movie Looper works hard to earn its R rating. It contains partial nudity, sexual situations, profanity, drug content, and bloody violence.

It also contains one of the most literal examples of a biblical principle I’ve ever seen on film.

Here’s the plot in a nutshell: Time travel is possible in the year 2074, and apparently life in that year ain’t so great. See, the mafia is using this new technology to send people back in time 30 years so they can be shot by guys known as “loopers.” The time continuum implications of this make my head hurt, so I’m not even going to try to figure out how this works. Anyway, Joseph Gordon-Levitt (My, how little Tommy Solomon has grown up…) is a looper named Joe. One day, the mob sends the old version of Joe (Bruce Willis) back for the young version of Joe (Gordon-Levitt) to kill, and…

Well, this is the problem with trying to describe a time-travel movie. I left something out already. Loopers can eventually retire and cash in the gold they are paid to dispose of their targets, and they are given 30 years to enjoy retirement. The only catch is at the end of those 30 years, they will die … because the mob will send them back in time to be killed by their younger selves. This is known in the movie as “closing the loop.”

So young Joe is supposed to kill old Joe … but old Joe escapes! (Sorry for the exclamation point. I got excited there.) This is, obviously, not good for young Joe, because now his 30-year-older self is running around in the present, which means … well, I’m not exactly sure what this means, but it’s really bad. The only thing I know for sure is that Doc Brown was wrong when he told Marty McFly he couldn’t interact with his younger self in Back To The Future, because young Joe and old Joe share quite a bit of screen time together.

It’s the interaction between these two that sets up the biblical illustration at the end of the movie. Old Joe gets married at some point, but his wife gets taken out when the mob shows up to send him back in time to close his loop. As a result, old Joe is bent on changing the past so his wife can live in the future. Young Joe could care less about his future wife in the present day, however, and just wants to kill old Joe so he can get his life back. So, essentially, you have two different version of Joe wanting to preserve their status quos.

The movie throws the viewer a neat curve ball early on, as the two Joes have a conversation in a roadside diner. Old Joe is attempting to describe to young Joe how his future wife will save his life, turning him away from a meaningless existence to a life of true love shared. When young Joe says he doesn’t care what old Joe wants, old Joe proceeds to tell him what a selfish individual he is (in R-rated descriptive language, of course) and how he needs to think of someone other than himself.

A kink in the notion of the noble older Joe is also introduced in this scene. Apparently, there is an individual in the future known only as “The Rainmaker” who is closing loops left and right. Old Joe presumes The Rainmaker must have ordered his loop to be closed, resulting in the death of his wife. So old Joe’s one driving motivation in the past is to do one thing and one thing only: Kill The Rainmaker so he can never order the hit in the future.

Old Joe is armed with an identification number of who The Rainmaker might be, but the number matches up with three different individuals, who – because this is 30 years in the past – are all children. The fact that his targets are little kids doesn’t deter old Joe, though. If anything, it gives him more incentive to carry out his task. If he can put The Rainmaker down as a child, he (or she, since he doesn’t the gender of his nemesis) can never grow up and cause all the chaos of the future. He feels bad about it, but old Joe still manages to kill one of his marks and would have taken down a second if not for some outside intervention.

It’s his third mark that young Joe runs into. While old Joe is roaming the city, young Joe has somehow wound up on a farm whose only residents are a single mom and her young son, Cid. Young Joe discovers Cid has overwhelming telekinetic powers and eventually manages to figure out that this is The Rainmaker old Joe is looking for. He also forms enough of a bond with the boy that he doesn’t want old Joe to murder him, no matter what that means for his future.

This sets up a climactic scene with the mother, Cid, and old and young Joe. It becomes readily evident to everyone that Cid could rip them all apart if he wanted to, but his mother (played by Emily Blunt) manages to calm him down enough that he relents. In fact, the mother has been working for years to try to harness her son’s powers so he wouldn’t use them in destructive ways – exactly the ways old Joe says he’s going to use them in the future. It is at this point young Joe has the following thought:

“Then I saw it. I saw a mom who would die for her son. A man who would kill for his wife. A boy, angry and alone. Laid out in front of him, the bad path. I saw it. And the path was a circle. Round and round. So I changed it.”

And then young Joe shoots himself in the chest, ending his own life and erasing old Joe from existence altogether.

Mark 8:35 state that “whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my (Jesus) sake and the gospel’s will save it.” Now, Looper is a movie totally devoid of any religious presence at all, and young Joe’s decision at the end is based more on a belief in free will and chance than on any type of faith in a higher power. But his actions illustrate this scripture perfectly: Seeing how selfish and ugly he would eventually become, Joe decided to give up his own life for the sake of another, providing a sort of mirror image of what Christ did for sinners on the cross.

Before he went to work for Dave Ramsey and became some kind of self-help guru, I used to enjoy reading Jon Acuff’s blog “Stuff Christians Like.” In one post, he described how the movie Man On Fire (starring Denzel Washington) actually spoke to him more about Jesus’ salvation than The Passion of the Christ. I had that same thought after watching Looper. I’m selfish, sometimes even when I think I’m not. I’m eternally wrapped up in what I want, and I overlook what getting my needs fulfilled can cost others.

In short, I need a shotgun blast to the chest. Well, figuratively anyway.

Because of some of the stuff I mentioned earlier, I’m not sure I can recommend Looper in good conscience to all my Christian friends. I know I’m glad I gave it a chance, though. Sometimes God can pop up in the most unlikely places.

Holes In Our Hearts

When my wife and I found out in April that our baby daughter had a hole in her heart that would require surgery to repair, a wave of thoughts and emotions swept over me. There were, of course, the obvious sensations – disbelief, shock, fear, thankfulness (that the problem was found), hopefulness. One thing I did not expect, though, was the odd sense of calmness and clarity I had sitting in the doctor’s office that day. In a way I still don’t quite understand, the parallels of a broken human heart and a broken spiritual heart were made very clear to me.

Once our doctor informed us my daughter would require surgery, I immediately realized her fate was totally out of my hands. I knew absolutely nothing about cardiac surgery, and that was the only avenue we could pursue at that point. I believe that is how God was first introduced into my thinking that day. He was the one who would truly determine the outcome of the procedure to come, no matter how skilled our surgeon might be. From that day on, my wife and I went through a process of handing things over to God until we finally, literally, handed our daughter over to the surgeon on the day of the surgery.

These physical terms were easy for my mind to lock onto. The spiritual similarities were numerous as well, though. For instance, had tests not revealed the hole in my daughter’s heart we would have never known it was there. To us and everyone around us, she appeared to be perfectly healthy. In other words, her outside appearance appeared to be fine while her inside state was one of decay. This is akin to our fallen state as sinners before God, in which we say all the right things, wear all the right clothes, perform all the right deeds, all while our inward being is rotten to the core without His forgiveness and grace.

The surgery on the hole in my heart was also not one I, nor any other man, could perform. I had to place my heart in the hands of the Great Physician, the same one who called Lazarus forth from the tomb. My daughter’s chest still bears a scar from her procedure, and she is still technically in the recovery stage. Jesus was scarred for me, and I now live a life that – even though redeemed – still bears scars from the past. I still struggle daily to put to death many of the sinful desires of my old life as I recover to spiritual health.

In the late 1600s, Pascal wrote of the “God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every person.” In 2013, a team of doctors momentarily stopped my daughter’s heart and repaired it to normal working order. The fact that God can fill the vacuum and that babies can survive open heart surgery is miraculous to me. Holes are being filled. Hallelujah!

Every Day?

For many years, I played bass guitar in my church’s praise and worship band. Our worship leader was a big fan of Hillsong and Hillsong United, so we played a fairly large amount of their stuff during our services. One of his favorites for a while was a song called “Everyday.” In case you’ve never heard it before, these are the words to the chorus:

Everyday, it’s You I live for
Everyday, I’ll follow after You
Everyday, I’ll walk with You, my Lord

For a while, I thought it was a pretty cool little song, mainly because I had come up this really catchy, bouncy bass line that went with it. On top of that, our congregation seemed to really like it as well. Little did I know at the time that this would be the song which would kick off what would become a constant love/hate relationship between me and what we deem modern “praise and worship” music.

To explain as briefly as I can, I began to become very uncomfortable singing this song, basically because I was making a bunch of promises to God that I wasn’t keeping. I didn’t live for God every day; I didn’t follow after Him completely every day; and I didn’t walk with him every day. Now, that’s what I aspired to do every day, but in all honestly I can’t ever remember a day I walked completely sold-out after God. The chorus began to seem like arrogant, fleshly boasting on my part. God knew that wasn’t the truth; why was I standing there trying to convince Him it was?

In the years since then, I’ve struggled in the battle as a song leader to choose songs that still proclaim the glory of God’s promises but don’t do so in a way that redirects that glory back in my direction in the form of a bunch of promises about all the things I’m going to do for God. The more I study scripture, the more I notice the importance God places on us fulfilling promises we make. Just consider this passage from Ecclesiastes 5:

 When you vow a vow to God, do not delay paying it, for he has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you vow. It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay. (Ecclesiastes 5:4-5 ESV)

There’s also an abundance of characters in the Bible who made lofty promises and then got themselves into some pretty hot water further down the road. King David boasted numerous times of how he would abstain from sin prior to his fling with Bathsheba. You’ll also notice Peter was far and away the apostle who made the most promises to Jesus about never leaving him, and he was also the apostle who received the most correction about making such claims off the cuff.

So far in my searchings, it has been difficult to find an older hymn that makes some of the bold and daring claims of modern worship music. Most of the sentiments directed toward self in the hymns I’ve run across have been directed at how insufficient our best efforts to live a righteous life without God’s grace truly are and how only He alone can help us achieve that life. Compare that with the chorus of Chris Tomlin’s “I Will Follow”:

Where you go, I’ll go
Where you stay, I’ll stay
When you move, I’ll move
I will follow you
Who you love, I’ll love
How you serve I’ll serve
If this life I lose, I will follow you
I will follow you

There’s certainly nothing wrong with making that the cry of one’s heart, and if Chris Tomlin is able to truly say every day that he has achieved this then I applaud him. It just doesn’t strike me, personally, as being very humble. Even worse, I believe the very real danger of creating a competitive atmosphere can be cultivated through songs which make these kinds of boasts. Back when we were singing “Everyday,” I remember having a very real fear that the people who were doing all those things every day were going to find out I wasn’t. I tried harder, but that totally flipped God’s grace on its head and left me right back in bondage to the law I had claimed to be set free from through Christ’s death on the cross.

I still sings plenty of modern praise and worship songs during our services, but I generally stay away from the ones that make big, bold, audacious proclamations. Right now, I’m grappling with trying out Aaron Shust’s “My Hope Is In You,” which contains this promise in its chorus:

My hope is in you ,Lord, all the day long
I won’t be shaken by drought or storm
A peace that passes understanding is my song, and I sing
My hope is in You, Lord

The verses of this song actually acknowledge dependence on God and His provision. In fact, if it weren’t for the line “I won’t be shaken by drought or storm,” I’d have probably introduced it to my congregation already. Perhaps I’m over-analyzing, but I truly wonder, though, if I wouldn’t be shaken in some way by a drought or storm. Can I honestly say that? And should I be encouraging someone else to sing those words when they’re not sure either?

I would welcome any and all comments you may have on this issue. I searched around on the Internet for someone who has addressed this topic (I’m at home stick today, so I have time to get all analytical like this.), and I came up empty. Where is the line between claiming a promise of God and arrogantly boasting of things we intend to do for him every day? I’m very curious to know what your opinions are.

The Right Man For The Job

Um, this is kind of awkward to ask. To all the women who usually read this blog, I’d kind of like to talk to the guys today. I mean, I guess you can read this if you like, but maybe you could show it to your husbands when you’re finished … especially if they’re dads.

I don’t know if there are many things more crushing to the male ego than realizing you are just not equipped to handle the task at hand. I remember back in high school a friend of mine once got he and I jobs picking tomatoes for a day. Well, it probably wasn’t supposed to be for just one day, but we somehow managed to turn our time on the job into that. That’s right: We somehow got fired from picking tomatoes. My friend would tell the story many times after that with a laugh, but I have to admit I was more than a little embarrassed to have to tell people I wasn’t even adequately suited to pick vegetables.

That’s usually the situation with any job you wind up not being able to perform, though; you always go in believing you’re fully up to the task. Law students who fail the bar exam come into law school thinking they’re going to be good lawyers. Basketball players who leave college early for the NBA believe they’re going to be great professional athletes. And men who find out they’re going to become fathers are confident they’ll eventually figure everything out and be good dads.

Of course, that last statement can’t be applied to all men. Some guys are just selfish, ignorant, immature idiots who believe the world revolves around them and their desires and could care less that they’ve just had a hand in bringing a new life into the world. Even so, many of the children of these lunkheads often wind up with some type of father figure in their lives, be it a stepfather or an adopted parent or maybe even a male mentor of some kind. These men may start out on shaky footing, but I would guess that many of them at some point probably wake up in the morning and think to themselves, “Yeah, I got a handle on this dad thing.”

As any man who has ever attempted to fill the role of father will attest, though, there is nothing like a child to utterly shatter your confidence. Your patience – which you thought was inexhaustible – suddenly becomes paper-thin. Your temper – which you thought was only a bubbling tea kettle – becomes a mountain of volcanic rage. Your knowledge –  which you thought to be vast and refined – seems inadequate and outdated. Your hopes – which once appeared destined to become reality – begin to fade like distant dreams.

In other words, you might start to think you’re the wrong man for the job.

I have this thought a lot not only as a parent, but in my line of work as well. It feels sometimes as if a certain level of (insert whatever word fits you) is required, and that what I possess falls well below that level. There was another man a long time ago, though, that felt exactly the same way – Moses.

After 40 years or so of shepherding, God spoke to Moses and told him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. Instead of packing his bags and heading straight for Egypt, though, Moses proceeds to go through just about every excuse he can think of to convince God he’s not the right man for the job. “Oh, my Lord, please send someone else,” Moses pleads in Exodus 4:13. God agrees to let Moses use his brother, Aaron, as a sort of mouthpiece, but is still very clear in His message to the shepherd – You are the man I want for this job.

It only recently dawned on me that not only is God telling Moses He believes he is the right man for the job, He is also stressing that he is the only man for the job. If this were some type of divine job interview, God would have moved on to the next candidate after about 30 seconds of listening to Moses’ excuses. He didn’t pass him over, though. For that moment and that purpose, God would not accept any other option. I suppose Moses could have run off into the wilderness somewhere, but, as people like Jonah found out, it’s pretty tough to outrun God.

Here’s my theory on this Father’s Day weekend, dads: You’re not only the right man for the job, you’re the only man for the job. For whatever reason, you are now responsible for a human life (or lives, in my case). I can’t believe, no matter what the circumstances, that occurred by accident. You’re the one and only dad, dropped into that position by Someone who wouldn’t take no for an answer. The Bible says those who love God are “equipped for every good work.” Could there be any greater work than being a parent? You may not feel equipped for the journey, but you are prepared to be the only thing that can be expected of you – a dad who’s going to get it wrong a lot, but is going to try and try and try his best to get it right.

So if you’re like me and a huge wave of guilt comes over you every time you hear your children lovingly tell you “Happy Father’s Day!”, let’s all take a step back this year and look at where we are – right where we’re supposed to be. Happy Father’s Day, dads. You’re the right men for the job.