New site!

What’s with that loaf of bread?

Glad you asked. You can find out at my new site:
www.joefuel.com

Much love,
Joe

The simple beauty of rest

Every once in a while when I’m too stressed or too homesick to sleep, I wait till all my housemates have gone to bed and walk out to the living room with my iPod, sit down and listen to an album straight through. It doesn’t matter which album it is. Some nights it’s worship or classical. A few months ago, it was Keane’s Under the Iron Sea album. Tonight, it’ll be the Cold War Kids’  new Mine Is Yours. The album changes, but the atmosphere doesn’t. I never turn on a single light in the room and I never do anything more than sip a cup of tea. Maybe sitting in a dark room and brooding over a cup of tea and a few tunes makes me a creeper, but the fact is I don’t really care. I just know that such an activity, or lack thereof, helps me settle my soul.

 

You see, I’m an introvert, which is psychological jargon than means I prefer my own company over hanging out in a screaming crowd. It doesn’t mean I don’t like people; it means I’m most comfortable alone. And in my life, those solitary moments are hard to come by. The average schedule for a student at my school is so packed he needs two weeks notice to schedule a 30-minute meeting over a cup of coffee. I’ve had a millionaire businessman tell me that my schedule was too busy. So, finding an hour to sneak into my living room and enjoy some music without having to worry about interruptions or schedules or due dates is almost miraculous. But tonight, I’m making the time for it.

 

There are so many things I enjoy about living in the technological world we have today – cars to drive when it’s freezing cold outside, telephones to stay in touch with my family a thousand miles away, and of course, iPods to satisfy my often schizophrenic auditory appetites on demand. But I often wonder how much more peaceful life might be if we didn’t have those things. Without computers, my professors couldn’t email me new assignments on a whim. Without electricity, it wouldn’t be feasible for me to keep enough candles handy to pull an all-nighter before a big test. Without miter saws, my best friend might not have taken that huge chunk of flesh out of his thumb.

 

Now, I’m not some crazed environmentalist seeking the abolition of technology for a renaissance of agrarian micro-communities. I’m just noting that most of the things we expect to make our lives easier only make them more complex. And sometimes I’m just grateful for the simplicity of a dark room and a little music.

 

I have no profound point for this post. There is no philosophical argument here. But may I suggest that you take some time to step away from all the to-do lists and TV shows to enjoy the fact that God has given you a life with which you have the opportunity to learn the simple beauty of rest?

 

– Selah.

 

The Non-practicing Christian

Someone I love dearly, though rarely see eye-to-eye with, once proudly told me that she was and is a “non-practicing Christian.” Unfortunately, I’m not very quick on my feet and didn’t feel it prudent to get in a verbal jousting match with her at the time. But it’s a thought which I often ponder and I’d like to now address.

 

But what exactly is a non-practicing Christian? Based on how I understood the phrase at the time and what I know of Sarah’s* life, I understand a non-practicing Christian to be a person who believes in God, presumably the Judeo-Christian God, but doesn’t live one’s life according to all the perceived practices or actions that “fundamentalist Christians” seem so concerned with. Further defining the non-practicing Christian by what I know of Sarah’s life,** a non-practicing Christian appears to be a person who even attends church on all the major holidays, but is rarely, if ever, concerned with Jesus Christ or Christianity for the rest of the year. In short, I define the non-practicing Christian as someone for whom Christianity has been reduced to a set of clever, heart-warming philosophy that no longer has much relevance in the day-to-day activities of modern man; someone who claims to believe in Christianity but doesn’t care to be bothered by Christian praxis.

 

I think it’s easiest to approach this argument by way of analogy. Is it possible for a person to be a non-practicing cyclist? For instance, if I visit a local bicycle shop twice a year, would that make me a cyclist? No. What if I visit that shop monthly or even weekly? No. Rationally, I must, at least, put my rear on a bike and pedal around to be considered a cyclist. So, we can reasonably exclude those who merely visit a bike shop, watch cycling on television, or mentally assent the merits of cycling from those we consider cyclists. But what if I rode a bike one or twice a year, would I then be able to consider myself a cyclist? No, it wouldn’t matter if I upped the ante to riding monthly or weekly, a few days on a bike does not make me a cyclist. My friend Josh is a cyclist. He lives and breathes cycling. During the spring, summer, and fall, he’s on his bike at least six days a week. Not for a few minutes, but for hours. During the winter, his daily schedule is defined by staying in shape to ride that bike come spring. When it’s too cold or the roads are too icy to ride, he’s running or snowshoeing or at the gym, continually keeping his body in perfect condition so he’ll be ready to ride and race in the spring. There’s no such thing as a non-practicing cyclist. A cyclist is defined not by what he believes, but what he does. Josh’s life, energy, and passion are consumed largely by and on that bicycle.

 

Is my analogy too simplistic? Not at all. Jesus said twice in John 14 that those who love Him would keep His commandments. By Christ’s own definition, his followers would be defined by action.

 

And what commandments? Well, in Mark 12, someone asked Jesus what the greatest commandment was and He replied, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.”

 

I could pull together a whole slew of passages in the Bible to reinforce my case, but I don’t really need to. Jesus said the greatest commandment was focused on who we love and how we love Him. There is no such thing as a non-practicing Christian, just as there is no such thing as a non-practicing cyclist, because to Jesus, loving Him was intrinsically connected with action. Simple belief or mental assent to the philosophies of Jesus isn’t enough. At best, that can only be loving the Lord with all my mind. But what about the heart? What about the soul? What about loving the Lord with all your strength? Strength, in particular, connotes action, because clearly Jesus wasn’t talking about loving Him while I’m at the gym.

 

The non-practicing Christian is a myth. It doesn’t exist. And I don’t really mind if a person doesn’t want to practice Christianity. I just prefer they not delude themselves into thinking they can consider themselves a Christian without allowing it to be their daily focus, passion, and primary motivation for everything they do. Those that love Him will keep His commandments. Period. That’s wasn’t negotiable to Jesus and it shouldn’t be to us.

——————————-

* Obviously, I’ve changed her name. I have not been given her permission to publicize her beliefs. So I’m trying to respect that.

** Thank you, Facebook. Where else would I be able to learn about a person’s every whim ad nauseam?

Memorabilia & Sentamentality

There’s a baseball cap sitting on my bookshelf that I must have spent 10 minutes staring at last night. It’s a faded blue Cubs hat with a green C embroidered on the front and a clover on the back. To me, that hat is nearly sacred.

I’m not a big fan of baseball. Honestly, I’m not much of sports fan at all. It’s not lucky. It’s not faded because I’ve had it for years. No, it came factory faded because sweet, vintage ball caps just look cooler. There’s no normal reason that this hat should be special to me, except that it belonged to my brother.

Robert was [is?] three years older than me, and he rarely let me forget it. All my life, he was there, playing the older brother. He loved to correct me, instruct me, and generally prove his utter superiority over me, the way older siblings do. Growing up, we were often at odds with each other; Robert had to assert his God-given right to enforce justice and I simply couldn’t abstain from wielding my greatest genetic predisposition – my mother’s stubbornness. Robert and I were as different as two brothers can be. He was the strong, athletic, creative genius and consummate extrovert; I was the shy, quiet, very non-athletic science kid and a total introvert. I could write story after story about our differences, but dear readers, please just take my word for it. Up through high school, Robert and I had a rather antagonistic relationship.

Most of that changed when Robert left home and went to college. With Robert gone, I began to realize that our family just wasn’t the same without him around. Without Robert, I was left to run all the errands and stand up against our mother’s perceived tyranny by myself. Without Robert, no one was around to tell Jimmy (my younger brother) and I which TV shows to watch or how stupid we looked in our school uniforms. Without Robert, life was just different, and not in ways that brought me any sort of joy. By the time he came home for Thanksgiving, I’d had the time to realize that I really missed him. And that, by my estimation, was the beginning of our friendship.

Two years later, I ended up at the same college that Robert and his wife Aimee were attending and there our friendship began in earnest. I spent a lot of time with Robert and Aimee during my first two years at the illustrious New Mexico State University. By the time the couple graduated and moved back home to find gainful employment, they were two of my closest friends. But after that, my relationship with Robert began to drift apart. Later, Robert ended up in Austin working for an advertising agency, being a husband to Aimee and a father to two gorgeous little girls, and hanging out with Jimmy and his wife Megan. I ended up at a small theological school in Kansas City. The physical distance wasn’t the only thing that had tainted our friendship, but that’s not really the point. It is sufficient to say there was a strain in our relationship.

Robert was diagnosed with testicular cancer about two years ago and spent the next 15 months fighting for his life. Part of that struggle involved traveling to Indianapolis for a two-month stint at the IUPUI hospital for high-dose chemotherapy. When Robert left for Indy, his then very pregnant wife wasn’t able to travel with him, so I dropped out of school for a semester to drive halfway across the country with my brother and served him as best I could. That mostly entailed doing Robert’s laundry, supplying him with loads of tea, and getting his film developed. But before the chemo chaos started, Robert and I had some time to kill in the area. We decided it’d be fun to catch a Cubs game in Chicago with Aimee’s brother Josh.

Somehow, we ended up in a hat shop and each picked out a faux-vintage Cubs hat. I picked a cap with a little bear cub in a red C, but Robert told me he’d had his eye on it. I knew that Robert had a dread fear of buying a matching hat, so I offered to pick another. But he insisted that I keep it and made up some tripe about it looking better on me. Eventually, he settled with this hat with the green C.

The next day, we went to Chicago to watch the Cubs play the Phillies. I was my first major league game and though the Cubs lost, it was amazing. The day was perfect – sunny but not oppressively warm. The seats gave us a spectacular view of the ballpark. The company – Josh, Ben, and Robert – was wonderful. Robert, ever the photographer, must have taken a million pictures. We had a great time.

Eight months ago, Robert passed away. He fought hard but the cancer just overpowered him. And last week, Aimee gave me this hat. I doubt she knew that I’d been there when he bought it, but I did. Now it sit on my bookshelf, reminding me of the two months that I was able to spend with my brother and serve him. I couldn’t fight the cancer for him, but I got really good at folding his clothes. And in those two months, something changed. We never talked about our faded friendship, never aired our grievances and discovered all our problems, but something changed and that friendship was restored.

When Robert left for college, I discovered how precious he was to me. But the pain I felt then cannot begin to compare with the pain I feel now. With Robert gone, our family isn’t the same. But he won’t be coming home for the holidays. Though his number is still saved on my phone, he won’t be calling to make sure I’m living my life according to his ever-sagacious standards. There is immense comfort in knowing that, as Christians, I will see him again one day, but it does not change the fact that he’s not here now. And this Cubs hat sits as a reminder of the brother I miss so very much.

It’s difficult to explain the pain one suffers with the loss of a loved one. In my experience, it differs based on the relationship. When my mom passed away, it felt like the ground had disappeared, like the earth had dropped a million miles from my feet. But with Robert, it feels like I’ve lost a limb, like someone cut off my right arm. I can’t get used to that feeling. I think of Robert and I’m confronted with his absence, like reaching for the newspaper and finding you have no hand with which to grasp it at all.

I miss Robert. He was witty, kind, and loving, which I am so often not. If it weren’t for his encouragement, I would have never started writing at all. If you asked, I could tell you a thousand stories about him, but just looking at this Cubs hat reminds me of the friend I’d found in him. Forgive me if I start to cry.

A Tribute to Noel Kerns

My brothers and I have made a practice of being mischievous whenever we get the opportunity. It started the way things always do for teenage boys – toilet-papering a classmate’s house, pranking friends from our youth group, sneaking onto our neighbor’s garage roof to dive into our little, backyard pool. My mom always said that she was waiting for my dad to grow up. As long as we weren’t committing a felony or putting someone in grave danger, Dad never did much to stop us. In fact, he often joined us in diving off that garage roof. Mom couldn’t have been surprised when we added “urban exploration” to our miscreant activities on Thanksgiving of 2006.

My younger brother, Jimmy, was coming home for the holiday from his first semester at U.T. Austin. Mom wanted to be sure that she would spend some quality time with her sons. She managed to convince the owner of some small restaurant to reserve a table for our family on the patio overlooking El Paso’s Thanksgiving parade for breakfast. I’m sure she envisioned a new Thanksgiving tradition.

Of course, parking was a nightmare that morning and my older brother Robert and I ended up having to park half a mile away from the restaurant. Walking down the street to join our family, Robert and I spotted the abandoned mansion that used to belong to a politician named Albert Fall. It was easy to spot a few ways into the monstrous house and Robert, the photographer, and I, the miscreant and breaking-and-entering extraordinaire, started talking about slipping into the house after the parade to explore and take a few pictures. We continued the discussion over breakfast and by the time we cleaned our plates, it was settled. The Feuille boys would be up to no good – Robert, Jimmy, Dad, and myself. Thus, a favorite mischievous pastime was born.

As we found more opportunities for urban exploration, we developed a system. Robert and Jimmy are both terrific photographers. I happen to be a decent scout and a terrific pack-mule for camera equipment. Robert and Jim posted some of their shots online and Robert ended up finding e-friends who happened to also enjoy urbex photo projects. However, there is no urbex e-friend who quite compares with Noel Kerns. The man is humble, honest, intelligent, and witty. He does amazing things with a camera, strobes, flashlights, and a few gels. But I’m relatively certain that he’s also slightly insane. He’s nearly obsessive about scouting and documenting urbex locations. Noel will walk into places at night that most mortals wouldn’t dare enter during the day, and he does it alone.

When Robert and I were driving from Austin, Texas to Indiana at the beginning of August, we decided to stop in Dallas and meet up with Noel for a night of mischief-making. Noel took us to a small town about an hour outside of Dallas called Mineral Springs. We drove by two points of interest before grabbing a bit to eat – an abandoned, 30-plus-story hotel and an abandoned military hospital turned junkyard.

As the sun was setting, we headed to the hotel. Noel, whom I had just met, quickly put me to work scouting the building for any possible entries. Honestly, that place creeped me out, but I traipsed around with all the courage I could muster. I’d hate for Noel to think me a coward. We ended up searching the entire perimeter of the building. I even climbed a wall and nearly dropped more than ten feet through a collapsed roof. Yet, we could not find a way in.

So, we headed over to the hospital. It may be impossible to describe how eerie the whole scene was. The sun had set. There were plenty of clouds in the sky. The stars weren’t exactly. And the moon gave enough light to make navigating the fences and high grass possible. There were maybe three working street lights shedding light at random spots around the huge complex. Everything was dreadfully silent, save for the crickets and the pounding of our feet on the lawn. Noel had been there before, but that didn’t make me feel any more safe.

We explored the hospital for a few hours. The first floor was filled with cobwebs and moths, which made it difficult to use the headlamp I was wearing. Every time I turned it on, I was immediately smacked in the face by a few months. The dead cats scattered around the hospital didn’t add much to the charm either. Still, we pressed in.

The first floor had most recently been the site of some sort of flea market. Every room and hallway was filled with bizarrely outdated garbage – Halloween costumes, ancient desktop computers, boxes of stage lights, and typewriters that secretaries would have killed for in the 70s. The second and third floors were nearly identical, with pitch black operating rooms, copious graffiti, supply cabinets, and patient’s quarters. We stopped to take a few pictures of a feline carcass and an odd set of filing cabinets. All the while, I stood around holding strobes and waiting for some hobo to creep up behind me in the darkness and drag me to my doom.

We made our way to the fifth floor, which had furnaces, air-conditioners, and oxygen pumps, and the roof, complete with a view of the whole complex and rain-damaged spots you’d likely drop through if you put any weight on them. Noel took us down to the basement, where we got to quickly glance around the morgue and a room that have been a chemist’s lab. We finally exited the building into a communal graveyard for junked cars, boats, trailers, and furniture. Noel began to set up for a shot of an old T-bird when I looked over to my right and saw a police car. Apparently, the police spotted Noel’s SUV and wanted to take a closer look. We packed up the equipment and prepared for a little excitement. We jumped for cover as the spotlights turned from the car to the junkyard. I hid behind a bed frame and a small tree as the police car drove slowly down the street behind us.

Knowing they were circling the block, Noel, Robert, and I stood up and started moving towards the car. The cops had driven faster than we expected and we dove for cover among some bushes again. I was closest to the car, watching in horror as the spotlight scanned the long, empty lawn on the other side of the bush. The light came inches away from my feet and never in my life did I so wish I owned some camouflage clothing. I felt like we were hiding for ages, but it couldn’t have been more than a minute or two. The car suddenly made a U-turn and sped away. We jumped up and ran full-tilt across the empty lawn, hopped a fence, tossed the gear into the car, and hit the road.

In retrospect, we should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. A few blocks later, we were followed by not one, but two police cars, both flashing their lights overhead. The officer swaggered up to Noel’s window and less-than-politely inquired about our most recent activities. We told the truth – we were taking pictures and taking a look around. He demanded to see our I.D.’s and proof that we were actually taking pictures. Noel obliged by opening the back of his SUV and showed him the cameras.

Moment’s later, the officer returned, semi-satisfied with our explanation and otherwise clean criminal records. He gave us an utterly absurd yarn about the fact that the hospital is actually private property and how the owner now resides in a renovated portion of the hospital with a large dog and a shotgun, ready to defend his property against trespassers. He also informed us of the hotel and recommended that we poke around there. We chose not to tell him that we’d already been there.

Noel drove back to the highway and pulled over a pair of vintage gas pumps for Robert to take a few shots and to check the equipment. Afterwards, we decided to head back to Dallas. Once we parted from Noel, Robert and I drove down the interstate to find a cheap motel for the night and Robert recounted his first night-shoot with Noel, which may forever be the most disturbing story I have ever heard.

Update on Robert

As most of you know, my older brother Robert has been battling an aggressive cancer since February, with tumors found on his lungs and liver. He finished his fourth round of chemotherapy in May and has been recovering for two months. While our family was together this summer, it had seemed like everything was going well.

In June, Robert was tested again for his “tumor marker count.” Most cancer cells produce specific proteins that can be tracked to find our whether any treatment is working. One specific marker was originally tracked in Robert’s blood tests at 2.4 million before he started chemotherapy in February. With each round of chemo, the marker continued to drop by about 95%. Things were looking really well, and June’s blood test showed the marker at 19.

The doctors decided allow Robert to rest for another month before they did another blood test. Unfortunately, Robert’s test last week was far from encouraging. The tumor marker had risen to over 900. So, doctors ran Robert through another battery of tests and scans in order to decide what the best method of treatment might be. They took another blood test and found that the tumor marker number had double to about 1800 in just four days. To add insult to injury, new tumors were found on his lungs as well.

As it stands now, Robert will be moving to Indiana for roughly 3 to 4 months for a new round of treatment. Robert’s wife, Aimee, and their two girls will be moving back to El Paso, from Austin. Aimee is due with their third child in about 2 months and will be staying with her parents until the baby is born. If and when she is able, she will join Robert in Indiana.

Robert’s new therapy regimen is something akin to dropping an atomic bomb. It’s not pleasant or pretty, but doctors seem convinced that this will remove any trace of cancer from his body.

Essentially, Robert’s stem cells will be harvested from his bone marrow and removed from his body. The doctors will put Robert through a potent and nasty form of chemotherapy that will more or less kill anything that’s alive in his body. After the chemicals have cleared his system, his stem cells will be placed back in his bone marrow and, ideally, quickly produce fresh white blood cells to help Robert fight off infection. Then, the whole procedure will be repeated until Robert is back in the clear.

Naturally, this isn’t what we were hoping to hear from the doctors today. After watching Robert recover wonderfully for the past two months, this news is an awful blow.

We’re looking for all the prayer support we can get for all the following:

1 – Robert’s complete healing.
2 – Safety for Aimee and their children.
3 – A smooth delivery for their third child.
4 – God’s favor and presence through all of this.

I was supposed to head back to Kansas City tomorrow morning, but that may be off the schedule as well. I’m making myself available to help my brother in whatever way I can. To be honest, I’m not sure what my plans are for the next few months anymore.

Thank you so much for your prayers. I love you all and I am so very grateful for your prayers and support.

I can say with certainty that we need to hear the voice of God now more than ever. If you have any words of encouragement or prophecies or anything else for Robert, Aimee, or anyone else in my family, please email me. I’ll be sure to get it to the correct person.

With all my love and gratitude,

Joe Feuille

And the Father was silent…

We found out yesterday that Robert’s cancer has returned.  Last month, his beta HGC levels were at 19.  Yesterday, his blood test shows that same tumor marker at over 900.

I can’t begin to describe how much it hurts to hear that kind of news.  We’ve prayed and prayed and prayed.  He’s just now getting back into the swing of things.  And now this.  It was far from good news.

Yes.  We still have hope.  No one has ever considered this terminal.  Still, how long must we pray?  To what lengths must we go?  How much must Robert suffer before he’s finally free?

C.S. Lewis wrote in A Grief Observed that God always seems to be silent at the times when you feel you most need Him.  “But go to Him when your need is desperate, whem all other hope is vain, and what do you find?  A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting inside.  After that, silence.”

Certainly, I can appreciate the sentiment.  When Mom passed away last summer, it certainly felt like God was frighteningly quiet.  The question has run through my mind, “why?”  Why be silent when we need You the most?  It just seems so horribly unfair.  Why turn a cold shoulder when I most need one to cry on?

The thought occurred to me that in You silence, You never lack compassion.  Hosea 3 seems to sum that up well.  You promised silence to the Israelites, not out of wrath, but rather compassion.  If You spoke to soon, they would misunderstand, because they would evaluate your words from their pain-filled perspective.

It’s not that You don’t speak because You don’t care.  It’s that You don’t speak because You are giving us time to heal.

When I returned to KC after Mom died, so many friends tried to comfort me with what seemed to be pithy comments.  Now, I have no doubt that those statements were heartfelt, but at the time I simply could not be consoled with mere verbiage.  Every apology seemed trite, because no on in KC knew Mom.  Could they possibly understand how I feel?  Each comment brought anguish, pain, and remorse to the surface, but comfort was scarce to be found.

The most comfort I felt for months was when David spotted me weeping during FCF one night and did the only thing that seemed sensible to him.  He sat beside me, wrapped his arm around my should and would not let me go.  I wept and wept, but he just stood there with me.

You see, I didn’t need words, even if they were genuine.  No, I needed the presence of a friend.  Words, my soul could not bear, but the warmth of another was more refreshing than any cup of cold water has ever been.

Is God silent when we are desperate?  Often so.  Yet, He is not, nor has He ever been a God far off.  He has promised to be near the brokenhearted.  Indeed, if He spoke to me about Robert’s condition right now, I’d probably assume that it was a lie or vain imagination.  However, just because I can’t hear Him, that doesn’t mean He isn’t here holding me, or there, holding my brother.

Faith is an interesting beast.  When you feel as if you haven’t got any, you may well find you’re actually exercising the most.  When you suppose that everything is going according to plan and your faith can never be shaken, you haven’t got a clue.

Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.  While I do not see my brother completely healed, my God and Father has promised me it will come.  In the mean time, I may weep and mourn over my brother’s suffering.  Yet, He’s promised never to forsake us, whether we can feel His presence or not.

Come quickly, oh dawn!  For sorrow has forsaken me and I cannot see, but with the morning comes joy…

Suddenly, I ache

A friend of mine once told me, “The greatest gift you can give a lover is more love.”

I have always been able to intellectually assent to that statement.  It does make sense.  But only recently have I been able to echo that with any degree of certainty.

In the short time I’ve had here with my family in Texas, I have felt a marked difference in my spirit.  It seems impossible to describe, but it is as if I don’t feel complete.  I feel off-kilter and dry.  It has nothing to do with my physical body.  No, it has everything to do with my spirit.

I woke up Sunday morning as my brother’s house in Austin.  I showered.  I shaved.  I helped my younger brother bake breakfast pastries.  Yet, nothing felt quite right.  I was thinking about all the things we had scheduled that day and nothing seemed appealing.  Pondering that oddity for a moment, I realized that it has been too long since my heart was last connected with my Savior and Friend.

That single fact had caused such a want in me that nothing else seemed desirable.  For the first time in my life, I could say with certainty that I was pained for lack His presence in my life.  As odd as it seems, that pain was actually a gift.

A year ago, I had came home after my first semester at IHOPU with all the zeal of a pre-pubescent boy with a fist full of firecrackers.  The possibilities seemed endless and I was ready to blast anyone who I felt didn’t live up to my standards of godliness.  Thank God nobody gave me a match.

A month later, I suffered one of the most crushing blows I’ve ever weathered.  My mother, with whom I often found myself at odds, had suddenly passed away.  There were so many arguments and callous words that I would never be able to make right.  Under all that grief and self-loathing, my heart shut down and so began the driest season of my life.  I have never found myself so close to utter stoicism in my life.

Imagine my surprise when I woke up and found myself desperate for Him again.  Could this pain actually be a gift?  Take my word for it, when you’ve felt nothing move your heart in months, pain is not only a gift.  It is a welcome relief, because it is evidence that you’re not one of the walking dead after all.  Yet, in this case, it was also evidence of something else.  It showed me that I really do love Jesus Christ and long for His return.  Without Him, nothing else is desirable or enjoyable.

The ache was sign of something else going on deep within my heart.  The ache was a sign of a deep, deep love.  But here’s the warning: the greater the love, the greater the ache.

The greatest gift you can give a lover is more love.  I may add one caveat.  Any lover will ache for the presence of their beloved, but that ache is a welcomed pain.  For the more lovesick you are, the more you love that person.

Sustain me with cakes of raisins,

Refresh me with apples,

For I am lovesick.

–SoS 2:5

Waxing lyrical after the downpour

I love the rain.  I absolutely love it.

It’s forty-two degrees outside and raining at the moment.  While that might stop most people from going for a stroll, I absolutely relished walking home tonight.

It may have something to do with growing up in El Paso, Texas.  After all, water falling from the sky is something still mystical to a guy who was born and raised in the middle of the Chihuahuan desert.  Water is a precious resource back home.  When it rains, it seems to be a gift.

Of course, those summer, desert rains are warmer than the spring rains in Kansas City.  Still, given the opportunity, I’ll wander through any cold rain.

There’s something about walking down the street as it pours that I will always esteem as the epitome of urban beauty.  It’s stimulating, in the truest sense of the word.  There’s constantly something to entertain your senses.

I have always been fascinated with light.  The way it bends and glistens.  The way you can manipulate it to create ambience and mood.  The way you can focus light or soften it to emphasize specific visuals.  Yet, there’s nothing that I enjoy more than the contrast of sharp, crisp street lights and their soft, wavy reflections set in rows down long, empty roads.  There’s the beauty of the shimmering likeness of a blaring headlight advancing down drenched asphalt.

I love the smell when it rains.  Last summer, I was walking down Red Bridge just after a rain in the middle of the night.  A car passed me and I caught a whiff of its exhaust.  It smelled just like Hong Kong, warm and humid and industrial.  Suddenly, my mind was flooded with memories of walking with dear friends through the most populated city I’ve ever visited.  I saw the night market in my mind’s eye.  That dismal, little shop where we bought pizza with pineapple and hotdog toppings.

Still, there’s no more comforting smell to me than a desert, post-rain.  The creosote and mesquite bushes open up their pores and the humidity carries a scent unlike anything I’ve ever smelled.  That smell will always remind me of home, remind me of my family,  remind me of who I am.

I could go on.  I could talk about feeling every, little drop splash against your skin.  I could talk about how I love the silence and calm that accompany the rain.  But, it’s too much.  Suffice it to say one last thing:

I love the rain.

Letting go

It’s amazing to me how quickly one stray thought can turn to worry, worry turns to full-tilt panic, and full-tilt panic turns to upheaval, disturbance, and unrest.  And when we get restless and freaked out, all we want to do is act.  Of course, what exactly we want to act on is impossible to distinguish or decipher, but in the moment, that face seems entirely irrelevant.

There is one thought worming its way through what could otherwise be a wonderful, fertile mind.  The disturbing part of it all is that one worm quickly splits, splinters, and replicates itself like a flatworm from hell.  Each replicant disguises itself just slightly based on its focus, quietly coercing us to act in some new topic or frustration.  Each slippery deception digs deep into our thoughts, until we finally snap from the sheer, overwhelming pressure of one million worries and anxieties somehow pulling us into three million different directions.  And suddenly, we snap, in whatever way seems best at the time.  Yet, it never has to go that far.

If you traced it back, one million hellish lies were born out of one single worry.  That one single worry was the bastard progeny of one stray thought.  Of course, it’s impossible to see that in the moment.  No, in that specific instant, it tends to feel like you’ve found yourself juggling a thousand vials of nitroglycerine.  With each catch, you try to throw the vial just a bit higher and farther from you, in the hope that you’ll have just a little more time to wait before you have to catch that same vial again, which will hopefully give you just a fraction of a second longer to focus on the other three vials that are falling all too quickly to the ground beneath your feet.  All the while, there is the unsettling knowledge that if anyone of those vials were to make contact with the ground or the other vials, everything would explode and you would most certainly die.

Some might council you that its best to focus on the apex of the vial’s path, which is to say that you ought to look just beyond your worries and concerns because certainly someday, you’ll have everything under control and you’ll be able to set each vial down gently, one at a time and your troubles will surely be behind you.  I tend to disagree.  It’s of no use to set your hopes on some fictitious day in the “near future” when your worries will cease.  That day will simply never come.  Such “wisdom” also negates the fact that there’s some vicious jerk in a jester’s hat slipping extra vials into your hand at best.  At worst, he’s actually slipping in a chainsaw or two.

No, forget that entirely ill-conceived plan.  It sounds like wisdom and feigns comfort, but it’s frankly moronic advice that’s simply not grounded in reality.  Instead, I choose plan B.  I can’t take credit for inventing this plan, but I’ve found that it works well.

Rather than painstakingly snatching each vial out of the air and gently hurling it skyward, just stop.  Take a deep breath.  Count to three.  And take a step back.

As painful as that seems, I have found that the moments when I do simply remove myself from all the anxious, chaotic striving in my life, I suddenly see clearly and realize that nothing is as it seems.

What once looked like glass tubes of highly-volatile, liquid explosive are actually just pebbles.  That chainsaw that the sly, little jerk slipped into your hands is just a baseball.  And that jerk is just a malicious, little devil intent on keeping you distracted from what really matters.  And you watch as all those pebbles fall to the ground with, surprisingly, a modicum of beauty.  The baseball bounces a few times there with the rest and suddenly, it strikes you that nothing exploded and nobody died.  Then you turn to that Man that’s been beside you all along and as He smiles at you, your heart starts to slow back to its regular rhythm.  He grabs the baseball from your feet and pegs that demon in the head, rendering it completely unconscious.

He leans in and whispers in your ear, “Shhh.  I’ve got it under control, remember?  I’m the One that created this world.  I’m the One that fed five thousand.  I’m the One that walked on water.  And I’m the One that died and rose again.  I can handle this.”

Suddenly, there is peace and quiet confidence welling up from some unknown spring deep within your soul.  The storm is gone and now there is simply calm.  You grab the pebbles from the ground and place them in His scarred hands.

Looking again into His eyes, you smile, knowing that everything is under control.  Everything that so distracted you just moments before is insignificant.  The only thing that really matters is this Man standing before you.

He takes your hands and leads you back to the path you can’t even remember straying from and you laugh.  Sure, you’re leaving behind all the things that you’ve put so much energy into.  But, you remember that it wasn’t worth all that pain and distress.  You remember that He never asked you to become a professional juggler.  And besides, you never really like the circus in the first place.

Rejoice in the Lord always.  Again, I will say, rejoice!  Let your gentleness be known to all men.  The Lord is at hand.  Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard you hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. – Philippians 4:4-7