Eggshells and Shoe leather

Today, a friend of mine is going to college. I don’t really like goodbyes...at least goodbyes of people who I’ve come to love and whose company I enjoy. But there is joy in this goodbye because she is about to go change the world and come back a 25-foot tall giant. I write for her this morning because few people I know exhibit the qualities of the words that follow. Her determination in the face of pain or hardship or challenge is what will make her great. Thank you, Sophia, for what you teach. This is for you.

So, I’ve got an issue with Humpty Dumpty. 

Maybe he wasn’t supposed to be on the wall. Maybe he was pushed. Maybe he had a little too much celebration with the other eggheads the night before (and why do we picture Humpty Dumpty as an egg anyway?). None of those things matter to me and they aren’t my issue with Mr. Dumpty. It’s the final line...

“...all the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again”. 

I understand broken. I understand falling. I’ve done both. What I don’t understand is lying there waiting for someone else to fix it. 

I don’t understand not getting up...or at least not putting in some effort. 

Now, before I sound like I have a hollow, heartless chest, let me say again that I get broken too. We all get broken and hurt deeply in our lives...especially those who aren’t satisfied with simply staying on the safe side of their lives and ascend what lies between them and the rest of the world...even if they know they might fall. Scaling walls makes people move from mediocrity to greatness. Falling is inevitable. Help is often welcome. 

Quitting is never ok.

Hard times is an opportunity to see what stuff is underneath the shell of each of us. I think about each person who has climbed the ladder of greatness and inspired the world to take one more step. Each of them had to go through the fire. Each of them had to endure hardship. Each of them had to take their turn in the desert. 

Sometimes the key battle isn’t the one everyone sees, but the one that is fought in the times that aren’t so glorious. It’s the discipline of moving forward when everything hurts because you know that you will be better. 

I’ve often heard faith misread as waiting for God to fix everything. I do believe in God’s ability to fix what is broken in my life and I don’t ascend to the belief that the weight of the world rests on my shoulders. I believe that He wants to move quickly and doesn’t want me to hurt anymore that I have to. 

I also believe he lets me hurt so that I can figure out how to get better...and stronger.

There have been many moments this season of my life that I’ve looked quizzically at the heavens wondering why key things in my life just seem to not be functioning. There are things I depend on to get me where I need to be. I don’t like being dependent on others, I like carrying my own weight and love to add what I can to the greater good of the community in which I run. I think being in love is great and have scaled that wall a time or two in my life. I enjoy hard work and have enjoyed being successful in my field. 

As I look around, most of those things lie in broken pieces on the ground. In some ways, it could look like failure, that God has abandoned me or that I don’t have the ambition that it takes to get back up. 

That would be a mistake.

What most people don’t see is that the the kings men aren’t standing around shaking their heads while I lie, motionless, praying for help. There is one man, hand scarred with the memory of his own broken, handing me some of the pieces I can’t reach and standing to the side when there is one that I need to stretch to reach myself. He knows it’s a muscle I will need for the next part of my open road. 

We do live a life filled with bootstraps and angel wings. God has promised to direct our paths as we keep moving. Let me say again...as we keep moving. In the desert of our healing we gain wisdom, perspective, and blessing if we walk in the light we are given and not succumb to our own fear of falling off another wall. The next time we climb we will find that we are stronger, our balance is better, and our shell a bit thicker. 

Beyond all of that...our love grows bigger because we gain the confidence that scaling walls and seeing bigger worlds outside and inside our hearts is where we belong. We know that even if we fall that we will be better. We will call from the top of the wall to other young eggs who think that this is all there is and we will reach down our own scarred hand to help them up. 

Humpty Dumpty couldn't be put back together because he was an empty shell. You fall off a wall, you break, you start the painful and painstaking process of putting each part back together again. It’s not the job of any king’s horses or king’s men. But they are there...dispatched from the King...to hand you another piece.

But don’t just lie there.

Climb.

rain

the lazy river

disturbed

reflections playing across the surface

like the paintings I remembered as a child

distorted

beautiful

there is thunder in the distance

rumbling on the breeze that is blowing through my grey t-shirt

the sound fills the air like a jazz singer humming before she sings a song that she knows will change

your life

her heart's been broken

yours is about to break

there will be no running for shelter tonight.

I will pull off my shirt

I will feel it all.

let the wet collide with my skin

my jeans heavy with their cold collection.

I will be your shelter tonight.

the rain will fall on my back as I arch

over you

rest your weary heart and bruised body

I will kiss you

you will sleep.

dry.

I want to feel the wind causing my skin to prickle.

it's alive

I'm alive

sometimes all you need to heal is to be reminded.

Lost on the beach

It's August and I've finally made it to the ocean. Summer has been full...too full to take any of my traditional day trips to find peace at the sea. I'm a terrible beach planner. I had this idea of driving to the shore after a day of trying to solve problems and after a week on a construction site and so I just left. Now I'm sitting in the sand with soggy Levis, a pair of Chuck Taylor's next to me, and my shirt folded on top of them. 

I'm happy as the clams once were that I plan to consume later with a strong beverage. 

As the waves kicked up on my legs (accounting for the soggy Levis) I thought about the last time I was here. It was a late night and I drove here, to this beach, with a mind and heart heavy with the issues in front of me. I took out my journal and wrote "I've walked as far as a man can without assistance". Standing on the edge of the world, I knew I had done everything I could do. 

As I sat in the sand watching a father play in the surf with his girls, I looked around and noticed that the problems I left here last year simply aren't here anymore. 

The sea took them away. 

 I'm scarred up a bit, but no longer broken. I still have fights to fight...but I've made it to the shore to say to the ocean "I've made it back again". It reminds me that I'll be back again as well to tell more stories. 

Ive come today filled with more desire than need. I've been feeling passions returning. I want all that can be lived in this life and to do love right. I want to keep feeling the sun on my back as I explore the depths of what it means to be human. 

And each year, I'll come back to this ocean to tell her what I've found.

And to say thank you. 

Mission

I'm on a Habitat for Humanity trip in the mountains of West Virginia. We are building affordable, efficient housing for families who simply cannot afford adequate living for their family. The area has an unemployment rate of 35%, and, as is the case with their inner city counterparts, the lack of educational opportunities and skill training leaves many of these residents trapped in their situation.

This is where we come in.

The houses we build not only provide a much improved dwelling for a deserving family...a la "Extreme Makeover" but the homes are energy efficent which means that families save hundreds of dollars a month in utilities bills, allowing them to move themselves and their family forward and establishes a caring community that wants to help them succeed.

In addition, I get to bare my arms, swing a hammer, run power-tools, and generally lift stuff in the hot sun as well as get to know some great kids and leaders in the church I serve. I'm all about it.

It's not a bad deal.

However, I'm not home. The families I serve are not mine. I will not move my boys into the home I am building. The people by whom I am surrounded, while I am growing to love them and they me, are not the ones who share the most intimate parts of my soul...

...because I'm on a mission.

Mission is what makes the world happen. Mission is when you take time out of the rhythm of a normal life, sacrifice comfort, relationships, finances, and maybe even personal progress for a season so that you can help make the world better for someone else. It's not an experience where you set out to gain, but an experience where you set out to give freely of the resources and training and heart that beats inside of you. There is always risk and you find yourself missing the ones you love, but you have a job to do and will stay until it's done. At the end of the day, mission is what makes heroes.

There are beautiful graces, of course, as you work. As I mentioned before, I will have deep relationships with people with whom I only knew by sight before Sunday. I have a deep sense of satisfaction at the end of a day from good sweaty honest work and my body is tan and more defined. I wake daily with a quiet sit on a porch watching hummingbirds and listening to the sounds of mountain daybreak. But there is no place like home.

So, I start another day. My pin-up picture in my bunk and notes from home squirreled away in my gear. All beautiful reminders of what I will see when my tour is done...but I'm not stopping until I've finished by job here. It's an honor to have my job.

I'm on a mission from God.