Sam Geisser

Men and Giants

It’s unfair to compare a life

of a giant to that of a man

Does a giant ever feel small

like a man might feel inflated?

—

When does a giant

shrink back to a man?

Perhaps once he is Hurt

Perhaps when he stops being seen In Black

—

Giants were kids once, too

Giants might have been afraid

of mom or dad

Giants might have lost their brother

and felt shame

—

When I lost a brother

I was already a man

He was just a junior giant

when he lost his

—

Mine wasn’t a blood brother

like His was

But Johnny’s Jack’s death

was an accident

My Dek’s wasn’t

—

Maybe pain doesn’t differentiate

between giants and men

maybe it’s reach and bend

transcends heights

—

Johnny, J.R., couldn’t have been a giant when

he grew up in Dyess Arkansas

It’s too empty and open

too flat and horizontal to harbor a giant

—

I tucked in quite nicely in the streets of

Townsend Montana, tucked quite nicely between the mountains

tucked quite nicely into the Rocky Mountain Front

tucked quite nicely into the continent

—

The big billowing clouds

attempting to block out the royal blue sky

in Dyess,

in Townsend

had the same impossible mission

—

Did J.R., before he was Giant Johnny

sit on his front porch stoop

as I did

and imagine

other places with those same clouds?

—

Of course he did.

The Air Force took him well above

well beyond Dyess

It took him to Germany,

It took him to see those Blue Suede Shoes

—

The Air Force took my brother to the desert

to bombs on babies

to IEDs

to PTSD and a diet of Jack Daniels

—

Johnny probably liked Jack as well

He probably more than once

Thought of Jack as he drank Jack

—

I never much liked Mr. Daniels

He’s not kind to me

In fact, he’s not kind to anyone I know

But apparently he’s a hell of a companion

—

Johnny, like Jack

(Daniels, not his long-dead brother)

was iconically American:

Southern, addictive, bold, not a fan of prohibitions, dressed in black

—

But Johnny was also red, white, and blue

and addicted

Iconically American:

amphetamines and border crossings, Billy Graham crusades

and Folsom prison capitalization

—

There are too many ways

in which our paths stray

Johnny and I

—

Even in my Emo phase

I didn’t wear much black

instead of boom-chicka-boom

our guitar cried midwest emo hammer-on ballads

—

But it was the Man in Black I idolized

because when I would deliver

hand-me-down furniture to people in the trailer park

from the second-hand ministry my mom ran

(who’s dad loved Cash)

Johnny’s words rang loud in my head:

—

“Well, there’s things that never

will be right, I know

And things need changin’

everywhere you go”

Coyot(m)e

The coyote is a survivor,

reckon he’s got to be

He lives in the snow at 40 below,

or in Malibu by the sea

“The Coyote and the Cowboy” – Colter Wall

But at the end of the day

Nobody cares for coyotes

They’re gonna burn us out

Burn us out of town

“Men and Coyotes” – Red Shahan

We didn’t have central air in the Sears kit home built in 1913 that I grew up in, so in the summer, a window box fan at night had to suffice for keeping us cool. Thankfully, the window in my room was inches from my bed, so it didn’t take all that long to cool off once the sun went down over the Elkhorn Mountains to the west of town.

Between me and those mountains were the train tracks. I couldn’t tell you if the train ran on a set schedule; as a kid (as if it’s changed since), I wasn’t observant like that. But to be romantic, I’ll tell you that the clicka-clack rhythm of the cars running over the crossing at the head of main, coupled by the dreary horn that lost its potency as it drifted through the airwaves to my house, put me to sleep each night during the hot summer. And between the train tracks and the mountains was the prairie and the winding Missouri river. That’s where the coyotes sang. Thinking back, I’m surprised that I could hear them so clearly. It speaks to the quietness of a small Mountain West town once the moon comes out. There were so many times when I dreamed of being boundless like the trains and the coyotes.

I never saw a coyote in that small town, though again, that’s not where my attention gathered – I mostly lived in my head. I had a paper route from when I was ten to twelve; I had to go down one alley at the end of my route, and at least weekly I got spooked by the same metal cowboy shadow cutout that leaned against a shed back there. I’m pretty sure I could sleep-ride my bike, and if a coyote was running right beside me, it could have just made a great ingredient to my dreams. But I did see them outside of town when I sought them out. I thought that I wanted to hunt them, so I went with my brother. He had all of the equipment: two 22-250 caliber rifles, coyote calls, a rabbit distress call, and white alpine snow camo – as we were hunting them in the middle of winter. All together we saw three or four. We were able to call them in with the distress call, but they’re smart, and they are careful. Curiosity does not generally kill coyotes. They never got close enough for a clean shot, which ended up being a relief because there was something about their wise reserve that felt familiar.

For as peripheral as they are, coyotes garner a lot of hate. In another time and place, but in an even colder winter, I was standing in line at a general store outside of Williston, North Dakota, when I overheard coyote convo that perked my attention. General store here refers to a place with gas pumps, ranch and feed supplies, outdoor work clothing, fishing gear, guns, ammo, beer, hot dogs rolling on cylindrical heaters – along with all other forms of highly chemically- stabilized (preserved) “food” – and lotto tickets. Standing under shoulder mounts of various types of deer (since they’re varietally impoverished when it comes to wild game compared to Montana), the store clerk was telling the customer in front of me that “they” (not the store – perhaps the local or state government?) were paying $100 per coyote pelt, as they apparently had become that much of a nuisance. I was working in the oilfield at that time, making “good” (I feel like that is a relative term for this subject) money, and this was the first time I actually considered becoming a full time hunter/trapper, and yes, being clothed head to toe in fur was part of that fleeting imagining consideration. I did in fact go hunting for them the following weekend, to no avail. We didn’t even see one, which made me ponder even more the animosity shown to these prairie dogs. Was it merited? It certainly wasn’t isolated. The westward expansion of the Settlers revealed equal hostility to all predators, not exempting coyotes. But though almost every other predator has been hunted to the point of being threatened, if not nearly extinct, coyotes have adapted – and even thrived. Where other predator’s habitats have shrunk, coyote’s have expanded; “liv[ing] in the snow at 40 below, or in Malibu by the sea”.

The 40 below of North Dakota wasn’t for me, so I found myself in Portland, OR., training to become a barber so that I would (hopefully) never have to work in that kind of environment again. Weather is one kind of environment, and the mild weather of the Pacific Northwest was quite the reprieve. But there is, of course, a social environment to be considered as well. You may be hard pressed to find two more polarizing places in the U.S. when it comes to the people and attitudes present. In short, one couldn’t have been more red, and the other more blue. I also had to learn how to adapt from working completely isolated from the general public, to completely immersed in it. We lived at the edge of Portland, where the city and the suburbs merge. There was a (rare) empty lot behind our house where I once saw a coyote scurry. Coyotes apparently used to run in bigger packs, until it no longer served them. They adapted, like this solo concrete canine. I was trying to adapt as well. I was leaving all of the normal and expected habitats for someone like me; evading the threat of extinction of my hopes and dreams. Perhaps I was on my way to becoming boundless like the coyote.

Coyotes aren’t migratory, but they are survivors and opportunists, so if an area runs out of resources, they’ll move on. I also moved on from Portland when my wife and I found out that we were having our first child – back to Bozeman, Montana for the opportunity to work at a busy, successful barber shop. Then from Bozeman to Helena when resources became scarce (read: Bozeman was becoming wildly expensive and unlivable for a family that didn’t bring in 6 digits). Then to Alabama during Covid for a nursing school opportunity for my wife.

But a coyote will always return to their preferred home if the circumstances allow. Circumstances not only allowed for us to return to Montana once more, but against all odds, allowed for us to buy our own home, our own territory. My window is once again inches from my head, it once again faces west, where the sun now sets behind the Continental Divide. If I have that window open, the familiar dreary train horn drifts to my ears nightly. Our place overlooks the Birds Eye valley, and there is indeed prairie beyond the county road before the mountains begin. I have yet to hear the coyote call, though I have listened intently. But one bright winter day, as I was driving with all three of my kids in the vehicle, we saw a fluffy solo coyote scamping through the thick snow between our place and town. I wondered why it would have been where it was; there were so many houses, roads, and the train tracks nearby. Why wouldn’t it be to the west where the mountains and boundless territory lie? But then it dawned on me as I click-a-clacked over the train tracks – to be boundless for its own sake is to be forever bound by the horizon. That train makes its way over the Continental Divide, only to return back once it has handed its cars off to the next engine on the other side; it doesn’t keep going on to the coast and then on around the country. This coyote was probably where it was because that is where resources were available during the harsh winter for it to provide for itself and its family. And I was driving to town to exercise and to socialize my children. The train has its cars, the coyote and I have our kids. I might still sometimes dream of being boundless, but I am actually very content with being bound like the trains and the coyotes.

Today is my birthday.

I woke up today with a wonderful feeling of gratitude. In the immidiate, I was grateful to be safe at home with my family after driving through the night in some of the most intense rainfall I’ve ever driven through (which is saying something for anyone who’s lived in the South). I was gratefull that it only flirted with turning into snow on one of the three mountain passes.

I felt immense gratitude for the sun and wind outside. I realized, perhaps for the first time ever, that I was born in an incredibly moody, wonderful time of the year. Two weeks ago we got pummeled by snow and today, as I look up our hillside while I write this, the golden mountain wild grass and like-colored sedimentary rock are once again completely uncovered; the ponderosas have no white weight inhibiting them from waving in the wind, and the last remnance of leaves from our one deciduous tree are shedding beautifully in the sunlight.

It actually may have been looking outside – or perhaps the outside looking in as the sun peaked through the slit in the shades – that surged the initial flood of graditudinal seritonin through my body, as it reminded me that we own this space; that the sun saturating the trees and grass and rocks – those are our trees,grass, and rocks that it nurishes. We own this property where we came safely home to at 2:30 this morning. In this moment, it’s not lost on me how fortunate I am to say that word: own. I can’t say that I deserve to own a home, let alone a chunk of land surrounding it. Sure, I can come up with a cocktail of metrics that defend my rightfulness in posessing this property – but I’m just as capable of being on the prosecution side, arguing why I, of all people, shouldn’t.

But today, as I woke, I didn’t have that meta-analyisis running through my head. What I had was extreme gratitude for the fact that, by forces well outside of my control, we ended up here, now. And gratitude emerged.

Further, I was surprised to feel that 37 feels much better than 36 did. That might also be in part the moodiness of an odd number versus an even – I’ll at least claim the possibility. But as I reflected, I think I came to a more comprehensive reasoning. Years 34-36 for me were very hard. Almost everything that I had done up to that point to build my personhood was washed away by a life-changing decision to leave a business that I had built from scratch, move across the country to where we knew no one, and become a full-time, “stay at home” (quotations added for every so-labeled parent, who understands that staying at home is a gross misnomer that absolutely negates all of the grocery getting, park/library/school/doctor/sports running, side business hustling, etc. that happens) dad to three very young humans.

To look back, it was absolutly what I needed in order to soften my set ways of being in the world. The 20’s and 30’s can be such a wonderful place of growth, or, sadly, they can reinforce rigid ideoloiges that keep us stuck in an ignorance of how we need to heal. I was teetering on the edge, and this severing was exctly what I needed.

My epiphany this morning revealed that in years 34 and 35, I had to deal with me. Interestingly, I had spent most of year 33 stone-cold sober, and I thought that I had dug down and “found myself”. What I’ve come to realize is that, though it was a great practice for me, it actually started clarifying internally that “sobriety”, to use the popular definition, was just another way that I might define myself – another way that I might defend against the percieved chaos of the unknown. But what I found by stripping away (unitentionally) most of the ways that I had come to define myself, e.g. entrepreneur, bread-winner, “head” of household (among others), I was able to start uncovering the reasons for my severe unease of being in the world.

It’s an ongoing struggle, but year 36 revealed that I was (though I wouldn’t have consented to the sentiment) ready to face many of the outside elements of hardship. I had apperently had my time of manicuring my lawn in reletive peace every week for 10+ months a year in Alabama while I listened to voices that tore down my categories of what I believed, challenging my life-long narratives and tormenting me into growth – now it was time to go outward, to inhabit the world of people and places that constructed such narratives. To say the least, I was rocked. It was and is a struggle, but still, as the sun has long since retired on this anniversary of my birth, I feel immense gratitude that these struggles have taken place; that I haven’t either buckled down into dogmatism nor resigned into passivism. I am awake, I am aware, and I am healing.

Beginning of Book: Expanse

I was born in a rural town in Montana. If you wanted to define rural, Townsend Montana would serve the word justice. Montana itself is an asymmetrical canvas; the Rocky Mountain front clustered on one end, giving way to millions of acres of flatland and resigning into badland through the center to the southeastern edge. With only a scarce artery system of two intersecting Interstate’s, the State highway system looks like a wide net cast over the map. It’s a place where 60 miles by car can almost always be accomplished in less than an hour. Small towns speckle the map; many of which wouldn’t have been given the designation ‘town’ elsewhere, but come on, who likes the dubbing ‘Village’? It just doesn’t sound…sanitary. Montana is certainly a fascinating State; dynamic, sprawling, vast. The sparsity of population, coupled with the extreme climate conditions and rigid topography infiltrates people’s psyche and except from the few university locales, the Territory still resists conformity or softening. Any modern chaos in the world still seems like a distant reality. It’s still a place where someone can own a lot of land; they can farm it or ranch it (or both), and still be below the poverty line. But most Montanans wouldn’t have it any other way. That’s why they either never left, or why they sacrificed thousands – sometimes tens of thousands of dollars in yearly salaries to return.

These elements give Montana a polarizing effect; it pushes one away with it’s cold, calloused winters and mentalities, then it beckons you back as the spring flowers unfold. Only the strong survive; or they find a way to tolerate. Toleration comes in different forms. One of the most prolific forms is substance consumption. The gathering of friends in a warm, lighted room (the antithesis to other side of the door), coupled with a pint or a drink to quell the inner angst caused by the frigid temperatures, short lived daylight, and long distances between each other can help appease the seasonal blues. Of course, as alcohol is an addictive, depressant substance – there is an inevitable tipping point; all too often drink is agency that hollows out the inner resilience and separates a soul from the rest of a person, leaving a shell. Of course, there are other culprits; meth has left many marks on the State. These scars don’t merely become old battle wounds; there’s no such glory. These are deep abrasions that never quite heal, they are always prone to breaking open again – festering all over for another generation. I don’t mean to paint a bleak picture, I do however want to paint a true one; as true as my limited capabilities will allow me to. In simple terms, Montana is a place where people have tread. Any place that has been imprinted by feet is like the binding of a book. Every pair of footprints is another tale that makes up the codex. Eventually all of these novellas make up a story of the Place. I would never claim to be able to tell the story called Montana. Rather, I want to give an account about Montana. I desire to zoom in and out of time and place to add more strokes to the Canvas of the State that I grew up in, and that I will always call home, regardless of where I may reside. If you and I could see a google maps history of all the places I have stepped or driven in the state (I’ve been around since ‘86 so no, it’s not possible…I hope), you’d probably think it’s pretty insignificant; but actually, this has to be the admission of most people, even if they have lived in the state their entire lives. Why? 94,109,440 acres, that’s why. Montana is massive, and there’s a lot of untamed territory out there. I say this to both drive home the point that I am not trying to give an encompassing picture of the state, and yet alternatively show how even one life lived in relative seclusion can still collect pigments from other brushstrokes, which create new shades and indeed, paint a unique and beautiful picture within the larger canvas.

So, my brushstrokes.

As I mentioned, I was born in 1986 in little Townsend. I was the only child out of seven to actually be born in Townsend. Doc Campbell, as the story goes, delivered me with his cow poop covered boots on. I came out blue and quiet, the umbilical cord wrapped around my neck thrice. Oops. The nurse immediately took me out of the room, only to bring back another child minutes later to replace me. Well, that’s the running joke at least. I’m pretty sure that my grandma, who happened to be the nurse, would have had a difficult time finding another baby in that tiny hospital, stealing said child, and somehow being so lucky as to finding a child that looks so much like his six siblings that he can’t go within a 30 mile radius without hearing “you must be a Geisser” by…anyone. Nope, I’m pretty sure my parents are full of it. Although sometimes I wonder…
I am the [insert adjective here] middle child. I’ll let you decide. ‘Weird’ is probably the most common and most appropriate adjective; though, I have had a polarizing relationship with the word. I am four years younger than my next older sibling, Sean; and five-and-a-half years older than my next younger, Hannah. So as far as middle’s go, I am pridefully more middle than most middles. This fact is more and more significant to me as I get older. My challenge, like anyone’s I suppose, is to consider the unique or colorful elements of my youth and not over or under appropriate special meaning or significance to them. The term ‘family of origin’ can illicit polarizing responses, depending on which side of healing you lie. In fact, there are two years separating those last two sentences because I wasn’t ready to go where this is going to go.

Snake Bites and Fires.

People can endure much. People can endure some pretty terrible work environments; we’ve all seen people walk though devastating diagnoses without giving up. But one thing that we cannot tolerate is our vocation – our calling – being tampered with. This is our sexuality; it’s that burning fire inside of us that keeps us alive. If this fire inside of us dies, our whole being dies. We can’t survive without it.

Many of us walk around with only coals still flickering in the darkest of nights, so it has to be understandable when we have big reactions to people when we perceive that they are about to tamp out our fire – whether they are doing on purpose or not. This must bring us to a place of grace for ourselves and for others when we see these reactions come out of us or them.

The word abuse can cause a reaction inside of us similar to that of finding a snake under something that we have just lifted up. We might recoil at the sound of it. We might jump back and get the shovel called victim mentality to smash it’s brain in with. Maybe sometimes that’s appropriate – if it’s a cottonmouth. Many of us certainly have the capacity to project blame on others who haven’t wronged us – or haven’t wronged us to the extent that we designate. But the longer I live; the more encounters I have with Jesus and people, the more I realize: usually it’s only a garter snake.

So why does it cause such a reaction? Well, have you ever encountered any kind of pit viper (cottonmouth, rattler, copperhead, moccasin, etc)? If not, you may not react in the same way. But it you have, you are probably much more wary. The thing that gives a pit viper it’s classification is an organ – a pit organ – between each eye and nostril, which is heat-sensitive and allows for them to more accurately strike any warm-blooded prey that they may encounter. That’s what a false accusation does; it’s pointed, purposeful; and it seeks the heat – it seeks that fire inside of you. There isn’t anything much worse than being falsely accused of doing something that you didn’t do; that’s a bite that you remember. You tend to be wary of snakes after something like that. So when someone mentions abuse, many of us have fight or flight reactions.

But here’s the thing: accusation takes place way more often internally than externally. We can probably all think of those people who’s social media posts are occupied with PSA “reactions” to their apparent plethora of haters that they have. I find it easy to judge these people, but if I’m honest, they’re just outwardly stating what I am internally dealing with. So much of our decision making happens at a subconscious, or even unconscious level. Our families of origin and our influences have so much more bearing on our thoughts, and in turn our decisions (which are just reactions), than we give credit for. If that makes you cringe a bit, good. That means you’re at least acknowledging it at some level. Many people roll their eyes at that idea and keep making those unconscious choices. It’s better to acknowledge and have no idea how to change it then to discredit it and keep on in the same patterns.

We’re all looking for a snake to blame. There is a snake, it’s just not one we can smack with a shovel. The truth is, we’ve already been bit. In my circle of Christianity we place much emphasis on the serpent’s head being crushed by the man in the famous passage in Genesis. We also quickly and appropriately point to how this points to Christ, the ultimate human, as the one who accomplishes this. What we rarely do is recognize, mourn, and accept that we, as humans, though we have victory through Christ, have also been wounded; that the snake is still around, and we still have to be wary because his head hasn’t been crushed yet. What we need right now is to be healed. But again, we become wary. We become scared of all snakes; and since snakes live outside, we become scared of the outside. We close in, and as we do, we start choking out the oxygen that our sexuality needs; that inner fire that drives us. this is the common abuser of our vocation.

In order to fan this flame, we have to open ourselves up to faith. Faith that, though we have been bitten, we will heal. But we can only heal with an anti-venom; something that we can’t produce ourselves – we have to trust someone else for that. This is the beauty of faith in Jesus. Jesus, like no other god, was embodied. He lived, breathed; had a sexuality of his own. He also is still lives and can be accessed when we can reach down inside of our own hearts, where he lives. He can also be accessed a plethora of other ways, but the wonderful part about this specific way is that we don’t have to go anywhere or do anything. In fact, to the contrary, what we need is to stay and stop. This may be a bit more of a challenge than we would like it to be, but it’s very achievable, and it’s been a life-changing practice for me. Because if I’m being honest, even if I have the means of transportation and time, I don’t always have the energy to go…anywhere. Sometimes my fire is only a flicker.

I’m glad to say that as I have practiced this silence and solitude; this time with Jesus, my imagination has been filled with vocational passions. I’m finding healing and energy as I let the other influences go and sit with him. As this sexual fire grows, I’m able to look out into the darkness of the world and see the serpents that need to be hunted.

P.S. If you are interested in this practice, I highly recommend the App called Pause. I wouldn’t have seen the breakthrough in my life if it wasn’t for this great help. Also, If you have the means and availability, you can also search out a spiritual director. This may be a relationship that you already have (the Spirit will reveal this), or there are professionals in many areas who can be found through a Google search.

Family Planning

Imagine being part of a revolution. Imagine that you are living your life; working your job, taking classes for a degree, raising a family, hanging with friends – whatever it is that you do. Then it happens. You meet this person who turns your world upside-down. You thought you were content; you had plans for your life and a general trajectory. But then you hear this person saying things that just take hold somewhere deep inside you and you can’t shake it.

Now, to be clear, you’re not the type of person that falls for every conspiracy theory or pop-psychology out there. You’re balanced, you don’t machine-gun share every post that aligns with your political bent; for the most part you dodge any kind of topic that might stir contempt or emotional debate. You’re just doing your best to stay in your lane.

But then you hear this guy. He’s not apolitical, yet he seems to cut through any argumentative bait that’s thrown at him from a mysterious angle that can’t be traced back to a partisan platform. It’s like his perspective is foreign, so otherworldly, that when he speaks, everyone, from every side, is knocked back on their heels. Yet, though it’s uncomfortable, it’s also refreshing.

Somehow, though this person isn’t an influencer in the typical sense – he isn’t running for office; isn’t a billionaire; doesn’t have millions of followers on any platforms – he changes you. All of the sudden, what you thought you knew about life, what you thought you knew about how things work and what this life – at least what your life is all about – changes.

It’s uncomfortable. You’re constantly compelled to stop listening to him. You return to your life and try looking over your plans that you had for your future, but all of the sudden they are colorless. They shouldn’t be! What happened? You were going to make so much money, take so many trips, make so many memories; all of which seemed so perfect before you started listening to this guy talk in his weird way about life.

The weirdest thing is that what he’s talking about isn’t actually appealing; not compared to what you had planned at least. He keeps talking about not living for yourself; about not building wealth; about not doing whatever you feel like will make you happy. It’s obnoxious that it’s aggravated your psyche so much; why can’t you just forget about him? But the problem is that it’s not just a mind game; you know that it’s more than that – and it’s precisely this problem that keeps his words and everything that he is hanging around in your whole being.

You hear other people talk about him and you aren’t affected the same way. They can talk about him; they can use the same language; they can quote him for god’s sake, but it’s not the same. But when he talks, even if what he is saying is utterly ridiculous, backward, and upside down (which it pretty much all is to you) – you know that there is deeper truth in what he says than in anything that you have ever known. It’s like what you knew to be true was black and white – what he says is color; what you knew before was 3d – he brings the fourth dimension and reveals the truer reality of everything. Again, it may be disorienting; nauseating to start to understand this because it turns everything inside out. But the consequence of losing the life you had planned starts to pale in comparison to life that you taste when he talks about his Kingdom.

You finally take the plunge. Whatever your life looks like from here on out doesn’t matter as long as you end up wherever he is. Where’s that? not sure. But it doesn’t matter, as long as he’s there, because the reality that he brings is just simply so much more than any situation without him.

So you keep following. You keep listening to his words, and though you have heard what he has to say dozens of times, each time you listen again, you hear something new. But more than that, you feel like you become someone new -not all at once, but slightly, incrementally. Sometimes you tune out the familiar words, and though you don’t realize the colors fading back to gray, you do realize the rush of colors when you tune your ear again.

Imagine that the revolution isn’t broadcast like a military or political revolution would be. In fact, imagine that the more subtle it acted, the more powerful it was. Imagine a revolutionary that hid in the hills; that didn’t track fame and power; that dodged opportunities to capitalize. Then, instead of raising an army for battle, he says that he is starting a family for a party. He also says that you’ve been part of the family from the get go. He starts to introduce you to one of your new siblings – they look nothing like you, they don’t speak your language; you find out that they didn’t vote the way that you did – and as you realize this, you both laugh uncontrollably because at one point, those things seemed to matter. Now, only he matters .

Runnin’

On Friday the 13th, 2006, I woke up around 5 AM; anxious. I stayed that way until around 10 AM, when I handed my two week notice to my supervisor. With his signature look: a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth, he snatched the slightly crumpled paper, which had been floating around in my truck for a week or two, out of my shaking hands.

“What is this shit?” he asks, while dramatically trying to flatten and smooth out the wrinkles. I had contemplated getting a new form, but these were before the days of simply pulling a smartphone out of a pocket, googling the company website, tapping a couple tabs, downloading a pdf, and sending it to a printer via Bluetooth to sign and hand in. I mean, I say that what I just explained is simple, but getting my phone to link up to a printer works about as often as getting my two-year-old to walk to his bedroom for bedtime. Regardless, it’s still simpler than driving across Las Vegas, asking for yet another form from the receptionist that effectively say “hey, here’s a reminder that I’m quitting; I’m going to cause ya’ll to be short another worker…but I don’t know when I’m going to have the nerve to do it, since obviously didn’t turn in the last form that I grabbed a week ago, so can I get another one of those?”

So yeah, I decided to go with the wrinkled form and told myself that he probably wouldn’t care; that he’d probably just appreciate that I handed it in at all instead of just not showing up for work. That’s what I told myself.

“I don’t give a shit!” smoke shooting out of both nostrils as he contorted his arms dramatically, this time undoing his previous ironing by crumpling it up and throwing it at me. If I were to guess, I think he was going for an ironic effect.

Despite the embarrassment of the display, which had definitely blown my attempt of discretion, I felt an exciting charge run through me. I was free. I worked the rest of my shift that day; got home at about 3 PM; loaded everything that I owned into my Blazer – a pretty easy feat of grabbing a couple of boxes, deflating an already halfway flat air mattress that I had to air up every night due to a leak – and I was flooring the gas pedal as drove down the entrance ramp to I15 North at exactly 5 PM that evening.

Fueled by Sobe No Fear and gas station hot dogs, I drove through the night until I reached a Town Pump gas station in White Hall, Montana at around 5 AM the next morning. Since this was before smartphones and the GPS maps that we now utterly depend on, I asked the attendant directions to a town that I was aiming for. I knew that there were a couple of secondary roads that would get me there, and I was hoping to save some time because, well, I was a bit tired and the well over one hundred ounces of soda no longer had any sleep-diswaying effects.

“Yeah, just straight down this road, man.” Nice.

About five or so minutes later, I hit a dirt road. Not nice.

I knew that there was a dirt road that went over the mountains between the towns; I had no idea of the condition, though I assumed it was not great. But I knew that it definitely wouldn’t allow me to go the posted night speed limit of 65 MPH on Montana highways that I wanted to go. But I felt committed, so over, instead of around the mountains I went.

I was kind of worried about falling asleep because of how slow I had to go, but that quickly evaporated after I did fall asleep, then woke up because of some washboard in the road, and caught something in my periphery – a massive buck deer trotting alongside my driver side door.

Why? I think he was concerned for me. All I know is that I was wide awake after that as I drove over the lightly snow covered pass and slept the rest of the night in my Blazer on a side street in the little mountain town of Boulder, Montana.

I had somehow convinced myself that I had missed the cold of Montana while living in the brutal desert heat. Really what I missed was the change of seasons. If I had given Vegas a couple more weeks I probably would have settled in as the highs started inching down. But I had other reasons too.

I was running to, and I was running from.

I was wounded, and I was looking for safety. I thought that I knew what home was for me. I was pretty sure that I knew what it wasn’t. It wasn’t what I was leaving back in the desert. Ironically, the times when I have lived in closest proximity to others, have been the loneliest.

So I had an idea what home was. Home was companionship. Home was being able to just…be. No pretending, no faking, no compensating on beliefs.

I didn’t find Home. Not exactly. The early twilights and increasingly brisk breezes of September and October in Montana were like meteorological expressions of what was happening in my soul. It wasn’t a bad season, it was just deep; heavy.

It could have been bad though. I could have resigned to the dark and gone down a road of either depression or addiction – roads that I have explored before. I think that they end up merging together.

Instead, though I didn’t know what I was doing at the time, I chose to live there. I didn’t run away from the dark and cold; I didn’t find distraction in a well lit, warm place. I was out in it, just like a month before, where I was walking around in the daytime desert heat in August, not flooding to a dark, cool casino.

It certainly wasn’t a conscious choice, it was just a result of doing more of what I had been doing for the last 6 months or so; not escaping pain. I had been running; I guess I just wasn’t escaping, I had been feeling.

The memories from this time period are seared into my soul. I have done a lot of escaping since then; whole periods of life where I just kept bouncing; both seeking home and avoiding it. But I’m sure that there is a synapsis connecting neurons from my brain to some in my soul, because when I feel the cold September breeze, or when the twilight is just right; or when I’m internally aching as I was in the moments of these experiences – it reminds me not to run. It reminds me that a memory, even if it’s dark, even if it’s cold – is better than the nothingness that happens when I escape.

Common

I took my kids to Waffle House the other day. It’s a rare ‘treat’ – though many who know what Waffle House is wouldn’t use it and treat in neighboring sentences. But for my kids, leaving the house is kind of a treat, let alone being able to go out and eat a syrup saturated waffle that is bigger than their head.

We went on a weekday morning. Probably around 9:30. Plans had changed for Darian, we had access to our van, and I was feeling some cabin fever, so off we went.

We sat down in one of the corner booths. Lucky for me, it was next to the bar seating where all of the regulars sit. Our waitress was nice; my four-year-old daughter was especially fond her blue eyeshadow.

One regular in particular, a Santa type – but of a southern variety, with a drawl and coveralls – was a magnet for all of the staff. One by one, as they were making their rounds, they’d swing wide of their tables and take a few minutes to chat with him. During one of these encounters, a young waitress, probably in her mid-twenties, was letting loose her current life situation to quiet, listening Southern Santa. everything from how she needs to get to bed earlier, to childcare, to how she’s trying to get her laptop fixed because the screen is cracked and it’s making it difficult to do her homework. In a matter of a couple minutes she’d unloaded her issues and was back at filling coffees and wiping down tables.

The next time her turn was up for a conference with Southern Santa, it was his turn to talk. He asked about where she was planning on taking the computer, how much it would cost, whether it was worth it to try and get it fixed or whether she should just get a new one. The barrage of questions was surprising, since he hadn’t talked much up to this point. But he was relentless; when she brought up the expenses, he wouldn’t have it. He’d help her get one, or help her get hers fixed – but it had to be a priority. It had to get done.

I started wondering about Southern Santa – what had he done for a living; did he still work? Was he a weirdo? As if answer to my pondering, a second regular, who had been there the whole time reading the newspaper and drinking coffee, turned to Southern Santa and started asking SS about his health – clearly a continued conversation from a day or two ago. SS filled him in briefly, then they both went back their coffee.

A few minutes later, an older gal came and sat down next to Southern Santa. She was about to start her shift. It turns out she was a regular here too, just on the other side of the counter. It was Ms. Claus.

This occurrence keeps bubbling up to my conscious. along with it is this word Greek word: ekklésia. It means gathering. It’s also translated church. Now, I didn’t witness any teaching, preaching, singing of hymns or spiritual songs at the diner, but I did witness someone offering, not only a listening ear, but also a helping hand. Which brought to my mind another occasion – one that turned a gathering into a church.

And the congregation of those who believed were of one heart and soul; and not one [of them] claimed that anything belonging to him was his own, but all things were common property to them.
Acts 4:32

This is what defined a group of people who didn’t have any kind social bond; they were racially diverse, diverse in gender, diverse in social status. What bound them together was their common belief that a poor Jewish teacher, from a Podunk town in the Judean providence of Rome, had actually turned out to be the creator God of the universe, who came to sacrifice his life in order to save the world. That’s what they held in common, and they believed it so strongly, that in turn, they held everything of theirs in common.

One last thing. That word common; That’s koinos in Greek. It means common – but it can also mean dirty; unclean. The idea is that it’s too common; that’s in insignificant; unimportant. Just think of public restrooms. That’s Jesus’ group, that’s his assembly. I think that I went to church at Waffle House on a weekday with my kids.

Rhythms

Six-and-a-half-months ago my wife and I pulled the trigger on a couple of dreams that had been slow cooking for about four years. If life is a highway, sometimes it’s an iced-over mountain pass that you find yourself descending; slowing down seems at least improbable, and the only possible choice seems to be to stay off of the brakes and hope for bends instead of winds. We were very much ‘there’ in life; between new businesses, new kids, and new towns – we seem to like to drive over passes in the winter…

But every once in while, you come around a corner and find a nice dry piece of pavement, and if your lucky, a place to park and contemplate the next leg of the journey. That’s what the Covid shut down in April did for us. All of the sudden the blips of conversation had before rushing out the door to work, or in between putting the kids to bed and passing out because another 4 AM shift was impending, actually became real back and forth dialog. We recognized that these deep-seated longings that each of us had were being buried by busyness, and that if we didn’t start acting on them, well, time might very well have scrubbed those desires away for either or both of us.

This new adventure was like nothing that we had ever pursued- there was no promise of security in any matter – we were moving away from family, away from a steady income; away from any familiarity in daily life – grocery stores, church, commutes; even cultural norms. The only things that we were bringing with us were our hopes, dreams, and our little family.

We moved into a very nice, quiet neighborhood (that apparently was the subdivision to live in during the 90’s…). The house that we rent is a 1500 sq. ft. one level brick ranch style house with a mid mod inspired A-frame front room, complete with floor to ceiling windows. The orange broken tile entry under an orbed chandelier really completes it for me; the retro faux wood paneling in the garage and the…floral(?) wallpaper covering every wall in the kitchen just push the esthetic beyond all my expectations. We have a huge fenced back yard where our kids have spent countless hours playing in a covered sand area, peeling cicada “exuvia” (shed skin – sounds gross; probably is to most, but we think it’s rad) off of trees, play ‘wizards’, or playing in a kiddie pool filled with lukewarm water – because that’s how it comes out of the spigot here year-round. In my wildest dreams I never expected to be able to “mow” each week through the third quarter of the year. Though my wife – probably more appropriately – calls it “vacuuming the lawn” at this point in the season. Regardless of what the mower’s effectually doing to the ground, every Wednesday with few exceptions I take the kids out with me and spend a couple of hours (usually broken up with lunch in between) pushing the machine around while I listen to Tim and Jon from the BibleProject dissect words or ideas found in scripture on their podcast and the chillin’ run wild.

While we run our circuit of playing, eating, cleaning, exploring, and working at home; Darian has been running in ultra-hyper study mode – taking extra credits above the curriculum track for the nursing program that she is in. I’m often bewildered by how much she takes in, while somehow also having the conscience to help other students by forming study groups, sharing study tactics or notes, or (probably most boggling to me) by giving of her precious time to listen, encourage, or empathically cry with fellow students. Her level of drive in her academics is both inspiring and exhausting.

The first and second half of the year has certainly been a swap for us (Darian and myself), one that we were both (and I still believe are) excited about – she has been able to relentlessly feed her desire to learn more about all things health and human body, and commune with the adults regularly for the first time in five or so years. I have been able to idle down in thoughts and pursuits of business ideas that once seemed to pervade all the tissue inside my skull. I’ll readily admit that my personal transition hasn’t been easy (refer back to the iced road analogy); I spent a lot of time trying to find something that would make me feel valuable – turns out I still needed a dollar sign attached to what I did with my time; that we were getting along fine without that income had no apparent bearing. I can’t say that I am over this struggle, but the sacrifice of living on less, working weekends and evenings in order to keep our kids out of daycare – is something I’m utterly confident is worth the lack of stuff.

Beyond the struggle of finding value in the monetary, the struggle to not seek distractions is real. I’m not much of a reader. I like to read, but my attention span – not so much. I don’t know why writing is so much different; I could do this all day and night, but there’s something about inactivity, silence; about receiving info without actively doing something that is very difficult. I realized this shortly after moving here. I was aware that I was going to struggle with purpose and idle time; to a degree I was aware of how tightly I had wound myself with schedule and doing, and so I took the advice of many people (you know who you are – thank you) and started listening to The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer. If you haven’t, in the timeless, infamous words of Shia – “just do it!”. I started implementing quiet into my mornings. I would just sit, listen, feel. It didn’t last long, my oldest likes to get up at 6 AM and having struggled for the last couple of years with insomnia, voluntarily waking up at 4:30 or 5 isn’t doing it for me right now. But, I will say that this two-or-so-month practice was effectually like hitting a reset button on my mind and, to a degree, my body. The dread of not doing started to dissipate. I started walking slower; smelling things and actually having what may be considered an emotional response to it. Bird sounds, colors; life as experienced by humans of yore started seeping in. Feeling has been a foreign…experience for me in many ways and at many times in life. I don’t know where the blame lies – western intellectualism, nature, nurture, technology – I’m sure it’s a cocktail all of the above and more, but what I am finding is that it really does require shifting of patterns, rhythms, habits – one doesn’t merely trip and fall into contentment, into psychological well-being; into happiness. Alternatively, one doesn’t bull rush or “grind” daily into the good life – what’s much harder in our culture and in our time, is to slow down. When I started feeling things once again like loneliness, empathy, heartache, imagination; they were so foreign and uncomfortable that it felt like something was wrong – feelings were foreign invaders. But by giving time to, as they say “sit with my feelings”, it’s as if the color of my humanity is resurfacing. The endless amounts of distractions would have us believe that the pale and limited access to a couple of emotions (anger and depression…just for example…) is normal, that these are the things that most people at most times in history have felt most of the time. That is simply not true. Reflecting on times in our own lives when “things were different” can help dispel the myth of “this is just how: I am/life is/things are”. Hope, real hope requires looking through the windshield and the rearview mirror.

About that one nagging, surprising feeling: loneliness. Perhaps this feeling has surfaced more often for more of us this year. It’s been nagging at me to simply acknowledge it’s existence, so here I am, acknowledging. There, are you happy, Mr. Lonely Feeling?

I think that given our extra-lonely circumstances of moving across the country to a city and state where we knew no one, at a less than opportune time for mingling and meeting new people, we have actually persevered quite well. In my year-end reflecting – which by no means happens every year, nor does it take form of perfectly calligraphed font on handmade, fibrous, medium toothed paper that has been stitched and woven into a chunk of hand harvested, tanned, and intricately stamped ostrich leather (just in case you had that in mind) – I recalled that with all of our visitors (of which we have been so honored and blessed to have a fair share of [thanks Dora, Josh and Sarah, Skye and Emma, and Gigi!]), the thing that we have been most excited to share with them is our rhythms. Our rhythms of eating, resting, walking, basking, singing, creating, reading, praying – they make up the current we floated and have found sustains through the turbulent waters. As we look forward to 2021, for us, our family anticipates another busy semester of late nights and early mornings, tight schedules and probably tight budgets; I take solace that these simple, but powerful rhythms will continue to carry us – together – to the open sea.

Post apoCOVID Ponderings

In one sense, it’s ridiculous to draw a comparison between what we are experiencing and what would happen if some natural or man made disaster of apocalyptic proportions took place. But in another sense, the swift economic and social paradigm shifts that have taken place could draw a parallel unlike anything that we have ever experienced in the modern era.

Call it a soft apocalypse. One without the radiated zombie deer. And instead of a twinkie deficit, we merely had a temporary TP shortage.

So what happens now? as the metaphorical dust settles and normality ensues, do we take away anything valuable? Do we reflect on the unprecedented event that just happened; or do we merely press forward – persevere, take charge and don’t look back.

I refuse.

I sincerely wonder how most people are reacting. I wonder if I am out of sync with ‘reality’. I imagine in some ways I am. In some ways, I’ve lived a vastly different life than than most. I was home schooled in the 90’s – 1-2% of the population for the U.S. at that time. Out of high school I moved to Las Vegas to continue pursuing a punk/metal/screamo career with my friends. It was short lived, but we did record an EP at the same area where we practiced – a storage unit/jam space/recording studio. Tell me that isn’t rad. I also got a really sweet, probably-too-large-for-a-second tattoo, camped in my Blazer outside of a small desert town north of Vegas every weekend in August, smoked a preposterous amount of cheap cigars, and overall learned what living in a pulsing city of a million or so people felt like compared to a small farm town of about two grand. I have also taken a rather meandering, side stepping, back-and-forth career path. I have worked in the medical field – I spent three years working at a children’s psych hospital as a direct care provider; I also did a stint at an assisted living facility, working exclusively with Alzheimer residents. I have worked various vocations in the construction field – electrical, heavy equipment operating, irrigation, insulation. I have worked retail and customer service. And my current hat as a small business owner and operator employs aspects of every one of these fields (not very much of the singing/screaming, unfortunately). I also dabbled in education – I lingered in college long enough to get an associates degree in business with a supposed emphasis on small business management, and realized that: (1) I wasn’t learning anything about how to practically and functionally run a small business, and that (2), though I was really becoming addicted to the pleasure of writing papers, getting really good grades, studying and researching my heart out – the track of attending another 2 years, wracking up another fifteen to thirty grand in student loans – only to be qualified for a middle management position was never my intended trajectory, so I stopped there. For now at least.

If you’ve trudged this far with me, I want to assure you that this is neither some bizarre resume to prove some sort of credibility (digression: I have been writing resumes lately and you can imagine how inventive I have had to be), nor am I attempting necessarily to spotlight how special or unique my experience is – as a barber I’ve talked to hundreds of people in the last five years and I like to treat these appointments as mini interviews; I love to ask about peoples stories – especially as it relates to their vocational journey – so I have garnished a deep understanding and appreciation for the twists and turns that most of our lives take. I only summarize some of my story to give you a picture of my experience; what has led me here. So back to feeling kind of crazy…

I believe that what informs us, influences us. That may go without saying, but then I wonder, why is it so easy to get lost in articles and ‘news’ that, looked at objectively, blatantly aim to influence, not innocently inform. So I have attempted to limit my ‘news’ input for the last month; focusing only on the bare necessities of information that I need to know. I have turned these down, but I’ll be honest, I have had a very difficult time turning down ‘influencers’. I’m not talking about the one’s with hundreds of thousands of followers, I’m talking about friends and acquaintances; people who have strong beliefs and opinions about the state of things. We’re all influenced in this arena – as we should be, to an extent. But one downfall of social media is that it is conditioning us to grab our phone the moment there’s a silence in our day (have you noticed the chime as you open Facebook? that’s called: C-O-N-D-I-T-I-O-N-I-N-G). So instead of thinking, or writing down our own thoughts, or staring at a steaming cup of coffee; watching paint dry or grass grow – instead of breathing – it’s too easy to pick up that device and ‘inform’ ourselves with endless opinions and pictures, then inevitably feel compelled to ‘share’ our own position on a matter. And are we even wearing blue light blockers when we do it!? I jest…about the glasses, but for the last couple of weeks, it hasn’t been a laughing matter for me, this conditioning. Even as I dodged the articles like landmines, I was breathing in the radiation of opinions and perspectives; aimlessly meandering through these digital fields where I didn’t even need to be. I realize how pathetic this may sound, but I was in all reality, binging on social media. In retrospect, since I have returned to work, I realize one reason why this might have been the case: a fundamental element of my vocation is talking with and listening to people. I do it all day every day. So in order to stay ‘relevant’ in conversations, I have grown, quite unintentionally over the years, a practice of knowing a little bit about a lot of topics. Actually, I think it’s a common and poisoning practice a lot of us get into. It’s so quiet, but it’s pervasive. And really, it draws us from deeply and wholeheartedly focusing on the thing that we should be. It draws us away from tuning in to our families, it distract us from engaging the tangible issues around us, and it overwhelms and cripples our creative processes. Being informed is one thing, being infatuated – especially about topics that we have little to no control over – is quite different. It’s like riding on a train: unless I’m the conductor (hint:I’m not. Hint 2: his name rhymes with Lark Huckerterg), I have no real control of where this crazy train is going, and I can’t get off of it unless I leap while it’s still picking up speed.

Yet here’s what happened: diligently I waited for the crazy train to come around the corner, and I jumped on without reserve – it didn’t even have to stop for me.

So here we are. we’re on this digital train and we entered the COVID tunnel together. The light in front of us has only been a pinhead – but now, suddenly, it’s growing rapidly and ‘normal’ seems not only possible, but imminent. Things that we may not have imagined returning to routine, at least for awhile, are now being streamlined. I foresee many of us being blinded as we come out of this. I personally feel like I have been holding my breath subconsciously, not wondering what awaits, as much as contemplating whether all of the time spent in the allegorical darkness – where schedules crept or halted, calendars had only a few scrawls, dinners were eaten together, board games were dusted off, stories were read, Zoom calls with far off family were built in to the day (I could go on, but I may tear up) – will these things be cast off like shadows as we pierce out from under the other side of the once looming precipice of COVID-19? It really hasn’t been all that long, but but for many of us, it’s the longest disruption from schedule that we have encountered since college, or high school, or…pretty much ever possibly. Are we really ready to see the light?

I know that it’s inevitable. I know that that we can’t linger here in these tight quarters – it wouldn’t be good for people’s appetites or our affects. But the bucking exit from routine surfaced some truths for me that I can’t ignore and let fade back into the recesses. First and foremost are the dozens, if not hundreds of conversations that I have had over the past five years while cutting older gentlemen’s hair that summarize like this: ‘I wish that I would have spent more time with my kids when they were younger’….’time sure does fly’…’now that I’m retired, i don’t know what to do’…

You may have heard of Bronnie Ware; an Australian nurse who wrote a book about the answers she received about regrets from terminally ill patients who she cared for. Here are the top five:

I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
I wish I hadn’t worked so much.
I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Hmm. How does this list make you feel? Read it again. Those first two sunk right into my chest. In fact, that first one has been the most covered topic between my wife and I during this hiatus from ‘normal’. And I can tell you that, even after almost five weeks at home, with little influences from outside sources – that pressure is still there. It’s still high enough to not let the lid off. It can be tricky to realize how influential others’ opinions – whether spoken or perceived – have affected our trajectory. Our mind has to synthesize so much when we are constantly moving, constantly working, scheduling, planning; it’s easy to absorb others’ opinions – especially when they are strongly given – into the mix of how we live. This may just seem like part of life – but then I go back to the list above, or all of those dreary haircut conversations, and I wonder. I wonder how many experiences I’ve forfeited by listening to the voices in my head, and now, with the barrage of social media influence on our conscience, those ‘voices’ don’t go away unless they are put away. Think about this: even with a worldwide pandemic silencing the streets of the busiest cities on Earth, the voices continue, even in the smallest apartments in the highest skyscrapers. Yes, there are upsides to having the the world to stream, but it takes a lot of discipline to actually shut off all of the negative and only schedule in the positive.

So what sheltering in place has shown me is that I am quite addicted to ‘noise’. Even with three little humans (1,3, and 4) runnin’ umuck, my default isn’t to sit in silence after a long day of playing, teaching, and mediating heated toy Property Rights arguments. Instead, when I’m most exhausted and susceptible, I scroll. And then I compare. And as all of us know, there are people who are fantastic at selfies; they’re also great at polishing their stories up and filtering out the raw, less-than-glamorous scenes. No one taught them how Story works. Unfortunately, these polished images do nothing to help us, they only contrast what we are seeing with our bent, bruised, and often broken stories; to the point where we become discouraged and start to neglect the very thing that will make us happy: our own internal work.

Thankfully, even as life is ‘normalizing’, there has been just enough jarring in routine, that I’ve finally started to wake up to many deep wounds – many of which I’ve existed with literally all of my life. If it weren’t for this disruption, I wouldn’t have seen my broken processes – the ways that I have coped with hurt and pain day after day, year after year. I’m tempted to dig in to some real controversial topics, particularly one that is generalized in the phrase ‘victim mentality’ – maybe in the coming conversations. But I sense that as some of you read the beginning of this paragraph, the eye rolling came almost involuntarily. If so, no judgement. But what I have been learning is that it is exactly those reactions – the involuntary ones, that give us some real insight to our broken internal systems and why some of us struggle with the path that our lives are on. If that last sentence speaks to you; if you feel like the trajectory of your life is completely out of your control and not the path that you have chosen, I would encourage you to open yourself up to that tension. Allow yourself to admit that life took some turns that you didn’t intend. Usually when these types of thoughts rise to the surface of our conscience, we stuff them right back down in an attempt to drown them because they don’t serve us, and because: ‘positive thinking’…and stuff…right? But admitting the truth wins out over telling ourselves a lie any day. Really, what happens is that we have the opportunity to be honest with the fact that we: 1) are not content with where we are, and 2) we want to change. And I can tell you that change is possible – but change, by definition, doesn’t come from employing the same processes that we always have. Example: I feel a sense of despair when I see someone else’s success in a matter. My reaction: stuff it away – distract myself with something else ASAP. Instead, I’m stubbornly learning that sitting for a moment with these thoughts – not combating them or immediately discrediting them, just acknowledging that they happened, is ultimately the pathway to their origin. We live with these toxic thoughts day in and day out, it’s only when we fess up to our brokenness that we can change our trajectory.

Much is changing in our life, of which I hope to share more of in the near future. But what this global slow down has taught me that I refuse to ignore, is this simple admission: I’m broken. I could spin it a different way, word it a different way,say it a different way; but that’s the truth of it. My internal processes have failed me and I acknowledge that finally. Of course, that’s not comfortable to say, but I’d rather come to this realization now, rather than thirty year from now when my kids are gone and I’m sitting in a barber chair, (if I still have hair) reflecting back on life.

You and I have an opportunity like never before and probably never again to pause and consider life. Even now as the wheels start turning, I would encourage you to imagine that the world is still very much in slow motion, regardless of what your schedule or routine looks like. Take the first four months of this year and reflect on what changed from the first two and the latter two. What became important in March and April? Did you start any projects that you have put off? Did you feel a bit more emotional when you had the opportunity to talk to a friend or a family member? Did you pick up an instrument or a pen? I’ve found that what I would say is important to me, often was the first thing to be cancelled or put off. It’s a great tragedy that most of us live this way, as evidenced by the Bronnie Ware’s research above. For me, writing is, and always has been my Soul’s home. It’s where I find peace and comfort; it’s where I make sense of the world and where my imagination blooms. And though I would say that it is important to me, my broken systems kept me locked out; they told me that I don’t deserve a home, that my place is somewhere else.

So my hope and prayer for you is that you got a taste of Home over the last couple of months and that you will sit with some of those annoying thoughts that ultimately are dissuading you from your true Place. Sit with them, and let them lead you back to their roots. I think that you’ll be surprised how far back in your story they trace, and what they trace to, but in discovering, you’ll realize that there is much healing for you, and the path Home is through that healing.