Why Pickup Trucks Are Good for My Soul

[This is one of the posts telling a story from the life of my Dad. Click here to see the others.] One of the earliest memories I have with my Dad is of climbing up on top of the cab of his truck, then climbing through his open driver's-side window down into the seat. I called the move "my Dukes of Hazzard," and I remember being fairly proud of my ability to execute it (without having been able to attribute my success at the move to my ridiculously long 4 or 5 year old legs; I thought it was because I was just like Bo and Luke Duke).

Even now as a parent trying to imagine my little boy doing that, I'm still pretty impressed by my old skills (and I'm very humble about them, too, which also impresses me). I can remember doing my Dukes move successfully lots of times- and failing at it once.

My clearest memory of my Dukes of Hazzard is the time that it didn't work, and as far as I know, the last time that I attempted it. As I remember it, in mid-Dukes move, I saw my Granddad a short ways away getting into his truck and decided to wave at him. Not quite yet understanding the physics involved in executing my Dukes, I didn't stop to think about the important role that my hands played in getting me safely from sitting on top of Dad's truck down into the cab. But I came to fully believe in their role shortly thereafter as my attempt to wave at Granddad sent me falling to the ground, hitting my head, and getting a trip to the ER.

I don't remember much of anything specific that Dad said or did that day. (Actually I'm not sure that this memory is reliable at all, considering the head injury.) But I think that I remember the incident fondly just because there are lots of memories of days with him in that same spot on the ranch. Some of them are from when I was still young enough to stand up on the seat in Dad's truck and not hit my head on the roof, and plenty of memories of being with him in his truck at the ranch as I grew closer to being 6'7", at which height I definitely cannot stand up inside a truck.

I guess it's not this way for everyone, but I just can't fathom life without having grown up with a Dad and a pickup truck. His truck was our mobile place of spending time together. And since the huge majority of the time I was able to avoid falling out of the truck and hitting my head, something about riding in a truck at least a half hour away from any city will always be good for my soul.

(I have friends who live in places like New Jersey, where apparently almost no one drives a truck. How do you people get by? What do you do when you have to haul something? Where do you sit and swing your feet if you don't have a tailgate?)

Two Good Questions Combined Into One

Who do I want to be?How do I want to live? How do I want to live, so that I can be who I want to be?

Over the past two years I have had the opportunity to participate with a group of other folks from various places and walks of life in quarterly retreats as part of a Transforming Community, led by Ruth Haley Barton and the Transforming Center. It has been a tremendously valuable experience for me, and this is part of the reason why:

It is a sad irony when, for any of a variety of reasons, people lose a sense of closeness to Christ because of their heavy involvement in doing things for Christ. Certainly these two do not have to be at odds with each other, but... it happens way too often. I was experiencing that a couple of years ago when I met Ruth and she encouraged me to be a part of the Transforming Community with her and a group of others. For me, there were many benefits to being part of this experience, but I think the greatest one was that it gave me permission to live my life in the way that I deeply wanted to live it, but at the time felt like I couldn't afford to.

Participating in the Transforming Community involved making a commitment to regular rhythms of things such as time in solitude and silence, engaging spiritual friends and others in relationships that help us grow, reading the scriptures in a way that allows us to be shaped and changed by their message, and others. These were all things that I had experienced at some point, but for which I had long felt a constant (although dull and shoved under the surface) longing to make major components of my lifestyle.

Among the tricks we often play on ourselves is the idea which the Transforming Community helped to dispel in me that it is someone/something else's fault that I am not living my life in the way that I truly desire to live it. Perhaps we lay the blame on our jobs, or relatives, our boss, or just some particular circumstance of our lives. But reality is that our lives are our lives, and one of the most important parts of making them spiritual lives is taking the responsibility to arrange them in ways that allow the kind of life we want to live to become a reality.

Since busyness has come to be so closely associated with responsibility and importance in our culture, the most common reason that we feel we are not living like we want is because of our sense that we have too much to do. While it is true that many of us have done away with any margin in our lives and are living beyond our limits, we do not have to buy into the lie that this is inevitable. As Dallas Willard says, "God never gives anyone too much to do. We do that to ourselves or allow others to do it to us" (from his article, "Personal Soul Care").

So who do you want to be? How do you want to live? How do you want to live so that you can be who you want to be?

I'm looking forward to the next few months of experimenting with seeking to further my own answers to these questions, as my church has given me an unbelievably generous offer of a three month Sabbatical leave in order to deal with recent circumstances of life and ministry. Obviously most of life is not lived as a Sabbatical, but I am hoping during this time to discover more of the life that I want so badly, to do as the header of this blog says, to take hold of that "SalvationLife," the life that really is life.

Scripture Plaques You Won't Find at the Christian Bookstore, #11

[This post is one of a series of potential Christian plaques that we would never find at a Christian bookstore. See the rest of the list here.]

These plaques would come in a set of two. And perhaps a more accurate title for them would be "Scripture Plaques You Won't Find at the [Protestant] Christian Bookstore."

(Why is Romans 2 always left out of the "Roman Road"?)

Completely Unhelpful Things to Say to Someone in Grief, Part 3

[This is part of a series of posts on completely unhelpful things to say to someone in grief. See the others here.] Nothing.

Even though my default option of what to say to someone in grief has always been this one, of saying nothing at all to them, I've come to believe that it's just as unhelpful as the things in the previous two posts (see Part 1 and Part 2).

Saying nothing is certainly understandable, because we're so afraid of saying the wrong thing. We understand that when someone is in grief, no one- including themselves- knows exactly what might open the floodgates of emotion that they're likely fighting to hold back. (Is it just coincidence that no one has said anything to me about Spam sandwiches since I recently posted this? Okay, it probably is. I can't really think of a time when anyone has ever said anything to me about Spam sandwiches.)

My reasoning when I have chosen to say nothing to someone in grief usually goes like this:

• As mentioned above, I don't want to unknowingly say the thing that might open the floodgates for them, so it's a safer option to say nothing.
• Plus, they very likely want their space right now in their time of grief and for me to say anything might be an intrusion into their privacy.
• And I really don't know what to say anyway. "I'm sorry" doesn't make any sense, because I don't have anything to do with the reason for their grief. "I know how you feel" probably wouldn't be good, because although I may have gone through something similar, I really don't know how this feels to them. Etc., etc. Any of the list of options among the things people usually say easily fall short of any good analysis.

So, we often choose not to say anything.

Now I'm learning from the perspective of the one doing the grieving what a poor choice I've made when others around me have gone through hard times and I've chosen to play it safe and say nothing. Saying nothing isn't just unhelpful, but depending on your relationship to the person, it can actually be painful for them.

Let's say that our friend and coworker, Joe, is in grief over the recent loss of a loved one, and for all of the reasons above, I think it's best to say nothing to him. The problem is that from Joe's perspective, his grief currently feels like the entirety of his world. Even though he's likely doing all that he can to resume some degree of being able to outwardly function in the world, inwardly he rarely passes an hour without being more focused on his sense of loss than whatever it is that he's supposed to be doing at the moment. For him, it is as C.S. Lewis wrote after his wife's death, "Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything."

And this applies to Joe's relationships as well. As he walks around the office in his first days "back" after his loss, he is keenly aware that everyone who sees him thinks, "Oh, there's Joe..." and awkwardness ensues. If my choice of handling that awkwardness is to say nothing about his grief, that likely comes across to Joe as being equal to my saying, "Joe, I don't know how to handle this, so for the sake of any kind of relationship we have, we need for things to get back to normal as soon as possible." Perhaps instead of saying that, I say an innocent, "Hey Joe. Good to have you back." But Joe knows that he is anything but "back," nor does he want to be.

The last thing Joe knows how to do in his grief is get things back to normal. Normal simply doesn't exist for him anymore. His world as he knew it before the loss is largely gone, and he is only at the starting line of the immense task of constructing a new world that he would prefer to never have entered.

So, please, in some way, say something. Joe knows words don't exist for you to say "just the right thing." And you don't even have to use your voice to say something. My pastor repeatedly sent me one-word emails or texts that said, "Prayers." That was enough. Or say, "This stinks," or any other words that are honest and don't try to fix the situation. Even words aren't necessary... my Dad's way of saying something without saying anything was often just to give a pat on my back.

So the next time you see a Joe for the first time after his loss, choose an option other than saying nothing.

*The downside of writing this is that I realize how many awkward next encounters I've just created with friends who will read this. Seriously, have no worries. Perhaps we can come up with a secret signal that will give you something to say that's inconspicuous to anyone else around, but lets me know you're aware... How about, "Hey, Daniel, would you like to eat this cheeseburger I just bought for you at Whataburger?" I guarantee you that will go well, as long as it's accompanied by an actual cheeseburger.

What if God is Not Mad at You?

[This is one of the posts telling a story from the life of my Dad. Click here to see the others.] When I was in middle school, I had developed quite a distaste for doing homework. I still found ways to get assignments turned in and have a good enough grade, but I really disliked the possibility of having to do any schoolwork while I was at home and tried to avoid doing so by any acceptable means. Most times, this plan worked well enough for me. Unfortunately, although the homework-avoidance plans I had were the best that my 11-year-old brain could design, occasionally something slipped through a crack in my scheme and caught up with me. And double-unfortunately, multiple examples of such slips happened in the same class.

It was 6th grade History, and after completely forgetting about two assignments, my teacher started to catch on and recognized that I needed some help with motivation, which she was gracious enough to offer to me by making me take a paper home to get signed by a parent that said something along the lines of, "Your son is not doing his homework, and I need you to sign this to make sure you know about it."

This was a different ballgame. I could deal with an occasional incomplete assignment, but my teacher knew that I wouldn't forge a parent's signature. (It complicated any hopes I had of escaping the situation that she went to our small church with us. I could look at her across the sanctuary on Sunday and be okay with not turning in an assignment, but I knew God would be on her side if I tried to do something along the lines of lying with this form.) So, the time came and I had to own up to my lack of study habits and get the paper signed by one of my parents.

I really didn't want to show the paper to my Dad, so I waited until the last possible moment one morning as we were getting ready for school and took it to my Mom. I got a very well-deserved lecture about needing to learn responsibility, but then she wanted to make sure the lesson sunk in and said, "Go show it to your Dad."

Now I was really bummed. I didn't want my Dad to know that I did stuff like not doing homework assignments. It wasn't the first time I'd gotten a responsibility speech from my Mom, so I knew that the news of my shortcomings wouldn't surprise her (which they didn't), but then she laid the double-whammy on me with the speech plus passing off the signing to Dad.

I had no choice. He was working at his desk. I walked up behind him, didn't say anything, and slid the paper in front of him.

He read it, didn't say anything, got a pen, signed it and handed it back to me. Silence.

Unsure of what to make of the gesture, I grabbed the paper and began to walk back to my room. Then he turned around in his chair and stopped me. "Hey," he said. "Keep up the good work."

I'd never laughed like that nor been so happy in all of my 11 years. Soon afterward, I began to do all of my homework assignments- for that teacher's class.

That's been one of my favorite stories to tell about my Dad for a long time. (Thankfully, my Mom puts up with me telling it... it's made its way into several sermon illustrations in her presence and she's always nice about letting me tell it again. I insist there's nothing in it that makes her look like a mean parent.) The story still makes me smile, because it's a great example of how my Dad could use a combination of being quiet, and also doing something unexpected at just the right time.

Even though I've told this story repeatedly, since he died I've begun to wonder about one part of it: Why was I scared to show him the note in the first place? Certainly I felt guilty about what it represented and wanted to hide it from him, but why? How did I expect he would respond?

For all of the years leading up to that day and in all of the years following it, I never knew him to be anything other than gentle, forgiving, and very slow to become angry. So why didn't I trust those characteristics about him when approaching his desk that morning?

I think there is a poor trick we all play on ourselves internally when we mess something up, and somehow that trick leads us to believe that maybe we aren't as loved as we really are. Even though my Dad was always a model of loving me regardless of my performance, somehow that day I thought my relation to him as his beloved son was in some degree of jeopardy. It was as if I thought this one mistake would be too much for him to bear and would use up the last drop in his uncommonly deep well of patience.

...What if God is not mad at you, about anything? What if he isn't waiting to pounce and dole out a punishment for you? What if he has no lecture stored up for you, but is actually waiting for a chance to surprise you with just how far his grace can reach- just how deeply it can touch the parts of you that have become twisted and led you to mess up in the first place? What if God holds nothing against you, but simply and more than anything else, longs to be reconciled with you- for you to smile in response to realizing that he really loves you?

Has he ever dealt with you in any other way than being slow to anger and rich in love? If not (and I'm quite sure he hasn't), why do we expect anything else?

The Best Advice I've Ever Been Given (and how different it is from the stuff we normally hear)

When I was a senior in college, getting ready to graduate and realizing I had to make a decision about finding something to do that would give me an income, I was a bit intimidated by the choices in front of me. Thankfully I spent a lot of time that year with one of my heroes, Stu. In the midst of trying to sort through the decisions about my future, Stu gave me the best advice anyone has ever given me: "Make sure you're in God's will today, and you won't miss being in it tomorrow." It's simple and powerful, because none of us knows what our lives will be like five years from now, but I'd be willing to bet that everyone reading this has a pretty good idea of how they could shape today in a way that gives glory to God in the midst of their everyday life. When I have stuck to Stu's advice, my experience has been that I progressively am becoming more the kind of person that I want to be while also coming closer and closer to the kinds of work that are most fulfilling to me and through which I can make the greatest contributions to my family and the work of God's kingdom in our world.

But there is quite a contrast between Stu's advice and advice I've often been given in the first decade of being in ministry.

This other kind of advice is always well-intended and has probably served the person giving it to me at some point in their lives. Let me be clear that I don't think this advice/set of questions is bad in any way, but I'm just trying to point out a difference. It usually comes out something like this:

• What are your goals for your career?
• Where do you see yourself in 5 years? 10 years?
• What is your ideal job?

All good questions. Nothing inherently wrong with any of them. The problem is what they raise in me: a desire to set my future for myself, focusing on pursuit of some idea that may not have been well-discerned, to the neglect of the way I need to shape my life today in order to become the kind of person I want to be when I come to my deathbed.

When I have followed the line of advice behind these questions, I have been led down paths that have largely ended up unfulfilling. I have pursued, received, then backed out of professional credentials. I have gotten myself over-committed to processes because of the benefit I thought they would bring me regarding those questions in the future, to the neglect of what is was doing to my life today.

I don't mean this to say that planning for the future is bad in any way. That's often a part of what's included in following Stu's advice and making sure we're in God's will today. But the question is one of focus and trust, as Jesus talked about in Matthew 6:25-34.

So, what is a way that you can make sure that your day today is shaped as God wants it to be?

Why I Almost Lost it Over a Spam Sandwich

[This is one of the posts telling a story from the life of my Dad. Click here to see the others.] Last week I was entrusted with the task of doing our grocery shopping. This doesn't happen often, as my wife carries way more than her share of the load with groceries and meals in our family, just as she also does in many other ways. But it worked out that I could do it one day last week when she needed to work, so I was sent with a list to the grocery store.

Whenever I'm sent with a list, I'm pretty bound by it. I get the things on the list, only the things on the list. But last week I put one additional item in our cart: a can of Spam. Little did I know at the time that this can of Spam would help wake me up to some things going on inside of me that really need to be dealt with.

The day after shopping for groceries, I knew that the can of Spam was available, so I offered to make sandwiches for us for lunch. I really like Spam, Kara will eat it with me 2-3 times a year, and our two-year old's taste for it is yet to be determined. So I was excited to make, and eat, the sandwiches.

In our house, we are trying to be intentional about using certain times of our weekends in Sabbath-like ways, and one of the things we want to do as a family is to use one of our mealtimes together to name things that we are thankful for. As we began to enjoy the rich delicacy of the sandwiches I made, Kara named something she was thankful for. I wanted to say something next so that our son would catch the idea and be able to think of something he wanted to say. So, with Spam-gratitude bubbling up in my heart and mind, this unique meat was going to be part of my statement of thanks. The words that came out were: "I'm thankful for all of the times that I got to have Spam sandwiches with my Dad."

The sentence started fine. By the end of it, I was doing all I could to keep myself from turning into a basket case at our kitchen table.

My Dad really liked eating Spam, and this was the first time that I had any since he died. Any time that it was just the two of us in the house, whether I was a kid or an adult, you could be sure that Spam sandwiches would be the meal of choice. He called it "the good stuff," hinting at our enjoyment of it even though we knew how many people couldn't stand it. He couldn't eat much of anything in the last years of his life, but Spam was the last meal that I remember him fixing, as we came in for lunch one day that I was helping him on the ranch.

I'm finding that there is a strange irony in grief: on one hand, the times that it hits me are unpredictable. I did not intend nor expect to be fighting back tears and struggling to get out choked-up words while eating such a good lunch with my family, and I definitely did not expect that the catalyst for the emotional shift would be the canned meat that I had on my bread.

But on the other hand, I'm discovering that I am consciously and subconsciously very capable of avoiding incidences like that. For me, avoiding any unwanted emotion coming out largely has to do with refraining from saying anything. One level of avoiding it is for me not to say anything in any way. Another level is for me to do what I'm doing now and write about these memories with my Dad. A third level, which I can't handle very well is to physically say the words. (I can write this, but I wouldn't be able to read it aloud to you right now.)

So I realize that I haven't written much since Dad died, and I think it's good for me to change that. But part of my difficulty in writing is that often I feel like that only thing that wants to come out is my grief, and I can come up with a lot of reasons not to write about that. But the fact that a Spam sandwich could so easily bring up emotion in me indicates to me that I'm not getting enough words out about my Dad. So I hope that some of what will come here is that I can tell stories of his life, how they have shaped my life, and how they have taught me so much about the bigger story we all live in- of God's subtle and subversive work in the world in and through normal people.