House on Fire

A few years back I lived in Madeira. It was a Saturday morning and I was coming back from doing something unimportant and heading home.

I was coming up Hosbrook and saw smoke up ahead. I took notice as I got closer because the smoke was black smoke rolling up from what appeared to be one of the houses ahead of me. In my mind, you don’t usually see black smoke unless someone is burning something they shouldn’t…or something is on fire that shouldn’t be.

As I got closer, I started to pass a ranch house with a garage underneath. The garage was opened and on the left side of the house and as I drove past it, I saw black smoke and flames pouring out of it. There were no police cars, no fire trucks, no gathering neighbors…this was happening right now and I was one of the first bystanders to realize it.

I pulled up on the side of the street and jumped out running up to the house.

The fire was taking off, gaining momentum as flames and black smoke were pouring out of the garage and I remember hearing glass breaking.

As I reached the front yard there was a young boy standing in the middle of it. He was maybe 8 or so, wearing shorts and at t-shirt. He was in a lot of anguish and unbelief and horror as he was watching…slightly pacing…not sure what to do. It was where he lived.

I went up and asked him if he was ok…and was anybody else in the house?

He started to say no, but then screamed “Barney! Barney’s in the house!”
I looked at the house thinking “oh Jesus help me” and could see the garage was spewing flames and black smoke but neither the first floor nor the roof were on fire yet.

“Who’s Barney? Is Barney your brother?” I asked…
I mean if it’s a brother or goldfish or toy animal, there was a big difference and I was going to have to weigh whether I was going in or not.

“He’s my dog!”
Dang…I knew I was going in.

I remember the lady standing next to the boy saying something about “you can’t go in there!” (there’s always one of those) as I ran to the front door of the house…big metal door was right of center of the house. I had no idea whether it was locked or no, but I turned the handle thinking a big “oh shit” thought. I had a flashback to a movie with Robert DeNero where someone opens a door and fire shoots out to consumes the person. (That was only in the movies, right…right?)

I turned the handle and opened the door.

As I opened the door…and there was this literal wall of dark grey-ish smoke…smoke so thick you couldn’t see anything BUT the smoke. “I gotta find this dog” I thought as I stepped into the fog bank and immediately realized the danger of moving forward into the room, away from the door.

Stepping into the smoke was an immediate shock to me. It was a white out situation where all you can see is grey smoke. You can’t see what’s in front of you at all, you can’t even see your hand in front of your face let alone the furniture, shape of the room, or a dog. The thick smoke choked my lungs and I could hear the raging fire eating the building. I could hear popping glass from what I assumed were the first floor windows over the garage breaking from the intense heat. I distinctly remember having the thought “Oh…this is how people die.”

I stopped in my tracks.

I still had my hand on the door and pulled myself back, stepping out of the wall of smoke, stepping back onto the porch.

My mind raced for a second…where would the dog be? Could he hear me? Was he still alive in there? Was it a big dog or small? What exactly was this dog I looking for?

Going back into the wall of smoke was no good, but leaving the dog in there was also unacceptable. The smoke that was heavy and thick, I couldn’t chance getting lost or passing out…there had to be another way.

Believe it or not, I remembered a childhood video where they told you to stay close to the floor…so I bent down close to the patio floor and got on my knees, peering into the front door. I could see a little through the smoke just above the house floor. I decided I would crawl in if I had to.

Crouching down as close to the ground as I could get, I screamed into the fire,
“Barney! BARNEY!” The only sound was the roaring fire.
“BARRRNEYYY!”

Then, like an ghost, this old gray haired beagle came wandering out of the smoke. He seemed ancient and the look on his face was one of confusion. He looked more like a “Yoda” than a Barney, but boy was I happy to see him. He looked at me at total confusion.

For a second, I was SO happy as he came out of the wall of smoke. I smiled and I said ‘good boy’. This look of total confusion was on his face as he looked at me…

…and then turned and walked back into the cloud of smoke and vanished.

I was caught completely off guard and dumbstruck as he wandered back into the smoke.

I just about fell over myself launching into the smoke to blindly grab, well, actually tackle him, and scooped him up. Pulling both of us out of the smoke.

He didn’t fuss or go wild or bite me, he seemed to know I was ok.

I brought the dog back to the boy, who, just for a minute was relieved.

A neighbor had her arms around him. She handed him a phone…he (and I) didn’t know what she wanted him to do with it. “Call your mom and dad.” She said. I felt sick for this boy…he made the call. (To this day I regret not taking that phone from him so that he didn’t have to tell his parents.)

At this point, I could hear the sirens wailing in the distance, they were on there way to where we were standing. Knowing that there would be nothing else I could do, I went to my car and drove home.

God uses us for moments like this….no doubt in my mind and I think most people would agree.
I came at the right time, right place, to save this family’s dog.

It struck me later, as it does now still…the dog.

The dog knew it’s world was on fire, it knew that everything was wrong. I’ll go as far as to say it knew it’s very life was in danger. When I called his name, he knew to come to the voice, came to someone calling his name. But when the dog came out of the wall of smoke, he saw something that he didn’t understand, someone he didn’t know, couldn’t conceive?
He wandered back into the wall of smoke, back to where comfort and safety had once been…back into the burning building.

Said another way, the dog would rather stay and die in the surroundings that he knew than have a stranger pull him to the new uncomfortable reality. That’s a goofy thing the dog did, right?

But…

We’re like this dog in so many ways. Our world can be on fire, burning down around us and we’re waiting for the firemen to show up while we sit in the Lazy Boy flipping channels in denial.

The job is coming to an end, the marriage is in shambles, our finances in flames, our addiction our of control…
….and we go turn on the tv
…crack another beer
…look the other way
…pretend it’s not happening.
We wander around a burning house wondering why it’s burning.

Often God sends someone to jolt us out of that denial…a brother, a sister, a police officer, a good friend…and we just turn and walk back into the fire, “nope, reality is not happening today” and we’re not going to hear it. ..it’s like we’ve done enough adulting for the day and that’s all there is that’s going to fit into our reality for one day. We ignore the flames and blinding smoke and noise that’s consuming and sucking the life out of us.

If…

If your world is on fire…then I believe God can be trying to send you someone to call you out of the confusion, out of the fire. I’ve never seen where the Good Father gives up on His child. It may be a familiar face or it may be somebody you’ve never met. But when the way out shows up, no matter what it looks like, get through that door.

Today is Thanksgiving 2018.

If you’re reading this, and it occurs to you that I’m writing this story for you…then take it as a sign that God wants better for you…and then answer God’s voice and reach out your hand for Him to take it.

If you’re reading this, and it occurs to you that I’m writing this story for someone you know. We have those people in our lives that we have reached out to so many times…their lives burning down in front of us…and we’ve watched them and reached out for years, and they continue to wander in smoke.

Ask God to help you reach out again…ask God to bring them to the door…then through the door. Those we know can be the hardest to reach. You can’t tackle them like a grey haired beagle…you have to extend your heart before you extend your hand.

You never know when someone is ready for a new start, a new life.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone,

Tony

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The Precipice: Conclusion

The confrontation that I had with my neighbor happened in late July, 2018, I detailed that incident in a blog post called “The Precipice” that was published on my blog “dieonempty@wordpress.com” on August 11th of the same year.

I won’t belabor any details of that confrontation. It happened, it was confusing, and it didn’t really end right in my mind…I mean I’m a storyteller, and I wanted a story with an ending that you can smile, nod, and sleep peacefully that everything wrapped up nicely and everything was put back in it’s place like it’s a children’s book.

But it wasn’t.

So after we went to court, after everything was done, it didn’t fit all nicely in a box.

I replaced a custom order door for the 1900s goofy dimensions…the damaged door still sits leaned against the back of my house (Jake will you PLEASE get this!) and I have ZERO expectations that I will be paid back as the court has ordered…about $900 down the drain.

Mentally, I won’t lie, I was on watch for a pissed off ex—neighbor that might try to find me one night with a gun, a knife, or a baseball bat. I set “weapons” in key places should I get confronted in my house or in my yard. I heard things in the night that woke me out of a dead sleep that I went to check with gun in hand. I installed a security system with cameras that were tripped by every animal type in North America. I kid you not, squirrels, possums, raccoons, around 7 different neighborhood cats, dogs, deer (buck, doe, and fawn), MANY birds, a neighbor kid playing with the neighbor’s stray cats, and the mailman, all on a REGULAR basis set off chirping “alerts”.

It was like I had a petting zoo around my house.

I don’t remember where the idea came up for a restraining order…but someone told me I needed to have one, so I filed for one. To get a restraining order, it’s a two part procedure. First you file paperwork to get a court date. THEN you go to the actual courtroom hearing for the restraining order.

SO to I file for the restraining order, go to court downtown, go before the judge and a date is set for the restraining hearing. Part one is done, part two is few weeks down the road.

With date set and I prepared myself with “my story” and the supporting documents that included the police reports of my first incident with him along with the actual assault report. The day before court I’m a little nervous. I got up early, find parking space downtown, got to the courtroom early, waited for my name to be called…and when it did, I went up before the judge only to be told that the other guy had not been served with papers and the hearing was postponed. They didn’t know how to find him…and that I HAD TO GET HIS NEW ADDRESS to the court.

Three things cross my mind.
1) WHY THE HELL didn’t someone just pick up a fu#%$ phone and call me to save me, the judge, and the 5 other people working in the judge’s chambers that my case was postponed to save us this wasted time in our lives?
2) You want the assaultee to get the assaulter’s address? That’a little messed up.
3) This guy’s on probation, right? Seems the court should have known to call the probation officer to get his new address. Seems perfectly logical to me, right? They didn’t. Seems they leave that up to you to call the probation officer (who knows they can’t tell you the information) to call the court and tell them this guy’s new address.

Anyway, court date is put off for a new one…two months down the road. Two more months of practicing my ninja skills.

Two months go by…haven’t seen him a single time….and I’ve been watching and looking…thinking surely this guy’s got to be pretty angry.

Nothing.

So, two months later, I’m back at the courtroom. I’m there early because I know what and where I’m going…I’m practically a regular now. I let a couple amateurs next to me know that playing with their phones is frowned upon…cause I’m a veteran in the courtroom now and I’ve watched them make an ‘example’ of a person or two. I also know that you tuck in your shirt and don’t wear shorts (One judge declared to all of us, “You’re not at a picnic, THIS IS COURT OF LAW FOR GOD’S SAKE!!!”) Also, side note, if there’s a state seal in front of the judge, don’t step on it…just warning you, it’s a setup.

I’m sitting there…and THE guy that I got into it with, shows for court. I didn’t expect him to be honest…but he showed. He sat in the bench behind me, off to one side. I actually wondered if he would hit me in the back of the head in court. I realize that would go poorly for him but what good would that do if I got some Chuck Norris death punch to the neck?
He didn’t hit me…but I watched him out of the corner of my eye.

Anyway, we were called up in front of the judge very quickly. She asked a few basic questions and we were about to get sworn in. She said to both of us to raise our right hands to be sworn in. I rose mine and the other guy was messing around with getting something out of his backpack. She snapped at him again to raise his right hand with a firmness that caught both of our attention.

He raises his LEFT hand. (Of course he did I thought)

“RAISE YOUR RIGHT HAND!” She barked at him. He’s startled, wide eyed, and shoots up his right, hand AND arm like he’s giving her a Hitler salute. I know he didn’t mean it (or did he?) but I actually had to keep myself from smiling.

We swore in and she told me to present my case.

I began laying out details as I had in my story. She took my copy of the police reports and looked at them as I outlined “my side” of things. I fancied myself a lawyer for a second, yes, this would be my next career.

The other guy tried to interject once, but she stopped him. The second time he tried to interject, she warned him NOT TO SPEAK out of turn and that she would not warn him again! I secretly wondered if she had been one of those mean nuns at one time in her life. Judge’s robe to nun’s habit was not much of a stretch.

I was like, wow, this was really going to go my way.

Until it didn’t.

She looked and listened to MOST of my story before asking, well, not so much asking but telling me that I didn’t have the criteria needed for a restraining order. I needed 2 incidents within 3 months….I only had 2 documented incidents within 5 months. I stuttered…thought for a second. Nothing documented, no witnesses…I had no other cards to play. I finished my side of the story.

My career as a lawyer was halfway over.

She asked me several questions that let even more air out of my balloon…where was the dog when it was loose? His yard. Was the dog ever loose after our first incident? No.

My career as a lawyer was three quarters over.

She then says do you have any other documents? Any witnesses? Anything else I want to tell her? No. Do you rest your case then? Yes I said.

My lawyering career was given a 2 minute warning.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when she asked him if he wanted to tell his side of the story or refute anything I had said. I don’t know what I expected…but I expected things to get worse from here. Maybe he would heap accusations at me, tell them about me being a bad neighbor…or maybe he would lie about things.

“Do you want to add anything? Do you want to tell your side of things?” She asked him.
“No, he told the truth…that’s exactly the way it happened.” He said.
“He told the truth.”

I think he was genuinely surprised that I told truth of everything…and it surprised him. I’m not sure why, but I was surprised that he was surprised.

The judge ruled that the case was dismissed in that it didn’t meet the requirements for a restraining order. I felt as if I had wasted everyone’s time. I was doubtful my next career as a lawyer would get off the ground.

When the judge said it was over and he then asked if he could go back to the house and get his stuff. The judge responded that my ‘stay away order” was in place and that he could not trespass or interact with me whatsoever. She also stated it would be best if he did not take his dog. He said that he had to give up his dog with everything that had happened. He said he hadn’t found a new place to live yet and that he would get another dog when he did.

I kind of made me sad because I know that dog, no matter how much I knew it wanted to eat people, that dog meant a lot to him. He had lost his dog and his place to live, that’s a rough couple months in anybody’s book.

The nun in disguise dismissed us and called the next case.

When you’re done with court, you go out the side door to the hallway where there’s an office, a cubby whole with a person and a printer. They get the official documents of the court, copy them, and give you a copy. So he and I went out the side door…and as we’re sitting there, he walks up to me and sticks out his hand and mumbles something about “being sorry about all this.”

To say I was surprised is quite an understatement.
In my shock, I shook his hand and I mumbled “I am too”.

He gathered up the documents and walked off. I sat down for a minute.
It was over for both of us.

In moments like this, I ask God, ”So….what was that all about?”
I think His response is “It’s not for you to know everything…it’s not all about you.”
Fair enough, I think.

As someone who has faith I often ask God to use me. When I say that I want to be used, I really mean, “let me win the super lotto so I can be super generous with some of it” or “I’ll be the hero in your story”….kind of way. I want a story like “let me catch the winning pass in the Super Bowl and I’ll give you all the glory” kind of way. But that’s not the way God always works. Some times you get to be the punching bag so God can teach the other boxer a lesson.

The lady next door has never given me a reason to think she’s a Christian…but some how I just know that she’s watched over by God. Maybe I was the answer to her prayer or her daughter’s prayer, or her granddaughter’s prayer…but I think it’s the lady.
Why do I think that?
She told the truth the night of the incident. He statement backed my side of the story. She is still my neighbor, and she and her man, and her daughter and granddaughter have been very nice to me ever since.

Another sign is that ALL the stray cats in the neighborhood are drawn to her house. And I mean ALL of them. They lay around her porch like seals on the ocean docks on a warm sunny day.

Maybe that guy he has a purpose to fulfill for God but he was hiding from it, like he’s Jonah and had to be in the belly of the penitentiary whale for 2 weeks to get him to wake up.
Maybe God needed him out of that house and onto something else…I don’t know and until he starts a blog or my neighbors tell me, I may never know.

I also suspect God used that incident to wake something up in me that I’m not fully aware of yet. Or maybe He wanted to show me what I was not….besides a lawyer.

Do I understand all of God’s ways, His reasons, His methods?
Not
Even
Close

Do I trust all of God’s ways?
I say yes…but I have to laugh because I know that I don’t have a choice. Like a toddler buckled into a car seat, I can scream and throw tantrums, or I can sit back, look out the window, and enjoy the ride.

Some day maybe he and I will be friends…we’ll sit and laugh about it, maybe have a beer.
I just hope we don’t attract a bunch of stray cats when we do.

Montana 2018: Expectancy and Expectation

I had been here before…3 times prior to this one to be exact.
I was in Montana again..an annual Christian spiritual retreat that I go on every September with about 15 guys. We read scripture, reflect, hike, horseback ride, and seek God on things that are deep in our hearts.

It is day 1 and we start out with rest and reflection. There are a few favorite places of mine on the ranch, one is on the deck of the bunkhouse that overlooks the creek (one of my favorite places to fall asleep). Another is on top of the hay bails that are stacked way over on the other side of the creek. One is the chapel, a small one room wooden structure with 8 pews and a stained glass picture of Jesus.

But, my favorite place on the ranch is the clover fields. I have reasons that go deep in my soul…some that I understand, some that I do not…but let me try to explain. The bunkhouse is on one side of the fence with the creek, footbridges, and chapel. When you go out the front of the bunkhouse, across the road, slip through the wire fence, jump a creek, walk up the incline, and then through a tall line of grass, you step out onto a clover field that is cut very close to the ground. When I cross the road and slip through the fence, it’s like crossing barriers that angels have set in place…and when you step out onto the great fields, it’s like you are stepping onto the soft green floors of a great hallowed hall. Steep rocky hills to the opposite side of the fields are like fortified walls around this great hall.

I meet God there in these trips.

On my first walk of the field that I had done the previous day on this trip, I spent several hours wandering in it, on it, around it, through it. On all sides of the field were a barrier of tall grass and weeds. Yesterday in walking the perimeter, about mid-way up the field, I found a thistle bush where the flower had not yet faded and the plant died, scattering its seeds. It was alone in its bloom with purple flowers bright and vibrant…a hundred purple spikes bound together to give beauty to an otherwise prickly bush.

Today, I was drawn here again…felt an impression to go here in this quiet time…it was one of those “I think God’s telling me something” moments. So I went.

I wandered up and watched as I came to this place halfway up this gigantic field…what was I looking for, what would I see? Would I see one of the moose that was supposed to hang out next to the pond near me, would I see the wolves again as they tracked the deer? What was the reason I was drawn to this plant? I looked, I wondered, I prayed, I waited…but nothing came to me, no moose was seen, no wolves…no answer. I wanted an answer and tried to make something fit…but the truth was nothing did. I did my quiet time and then headed back towards the bunkhouse.

On my way back I looked for other flowering thistle bushes…but all that I saw were grey/brown, dead, scattering their seeds into the wind. I pondered the one I had been next to…it was in full bloom and beauty, full of life…and all the others I passed were past their bloom. It had to obviously be a late bloomer, right? Out of timing with the other similar plants…

A thought interrupted my thinking, “Just as you are…but you will bloom.”

I paused in my walk back to the bunk house…I’m going to say that was you God…not a simple thought in my head.

I’ll tuck that one away for the future…was that God? Only the future will show.

.

In life, God has things for us…those things are not about cars and houses and 401ks, like our lives are…they are about things of the heart, about healing, about His work and His purposes. We sometimes put our expectations on things, missing that God’s plan is bigger and better than what we imagine…it’s full of life and healing and helping others.

It’s our expectations that get in the way, that cloud our lives, that deal us a hand of disappointment over and over and over and over. I had expectations that God was going to do something that I wanted Him to do…meet up with a moose or wolves. Instead I should have been ‘expectant’ to meet up with Him and then let Him provide the surprise.

The surprise is that some times you’re hoping to meet up with something that might not be good for you like a couple hungry wolves or a pissed off moose with an attitude…instead you meet God…who has good things planned for you… where wolves and moose do not.

The Precipice

I had him.

I knelt over my next door neighbor, sitting on his chest.
I had him pinned to the ground, his arms were beneath my knees so he could not raise them up and shield his face, he could not stop me from what I was about to do. My left hand was wrapped firmly around his neck, holding his head stationary to the spot on the ground to my picking. My right hand was raised in a fist to strike a most damaging blow.

I could feel my muscles in tune, the adrenaline coursing through my veins…my anger…I tightened the muscles in my fist one more notch as I prepared to bring my fury down on him. He yelled up at me how he was going to “f#@k me up”.. and as I looked at his face… I had half a second where I thought about where the blow should fall. Should I bring the blow straight down on the bridge of his nose, or should I swing a right then left hooks that would catch his jawbones… a combination would undoubtedly silence his angry tirade and stop his struggle to get his arms free.

He was yelling defiantly when I raised up on him and drew my fist just a little farther back…the timing off my weight dropping back down on him timed with the blow would put maximum power into my punch.

I swear that for a moment, just for that second, it felt as though I was holding the hammer of Thor. I knew the power that I could bring down on this man.

And he realized what was about to happen.

This next-door neighbor and I were at odds from our first interaction. I had purchased the property and one of the first days I was at the building working, and I went out the back door and a man was standing in my backyard with a pit bull loose, throwing sticks.

When I stepped out of my house and the dog saw me the dog took off towards me, the neighbor almost seemed panicked as he grabbed and restrained the dog that obviously wanted to eat me.

I let him know that I was the new owner and asked him to keep the dog over on his property. He secured the dog in his yard and then came back to the property line and called me over. He stated that if I ever set foot in his property that he would knock me out. He then squared up and brought his fists up. I tried then and several times afterwards to become friendly with him but he would have nothing of it.

Several months later I was working at the house late one night when I heard the dog outside running around. I went outside, and, unsure of what I was seeing, I asked if his dog was on a leash. It wasn’t. He said “get back in your house bitch or I’ll knock you out”. After several attempts to de-escalate the situation, again stated he was going to come over there knock me out to which I got fed up and replied “I don’t think so.”

Seemingly surprised at my comment, he walked over the property line squared up and then threw up a punch at me that didn’t connect, and then retreated back on his property line.
I called the cops to document thinking that this may not be our last interaction.

So that happened.

Now, it’s Sunday night, months later, about 11:30 PM there’s a knock at my door. The next-door lady which I thought was his mother had come over to tell me that the hatch on my SUV was open to which I thanked her and walked out to inspect the car. We’re making small talk when HE came over.

He started demanding what the problem was. His mother and I both stated there was no problem and that I was just checking to see why my truck was open. He kept saying he and I had a problem and HE was going to solve it. His mother was telling him to go back to the house but he was not leaving my driveway. I was annoyed but decided to ignore him hoping that would de-escalate the situation as a checked out the rest of my car. I came back to the rear of the car where they were standing and shut the hatch. As I shut the hatch, he stepped up and trapped me between the car and himself stating that there was a problem and he was going to take care of it right now.

Standing so close to me that he was breathing on me, I stated that he needed to move back, which he ignored. I put my hands on his shoulders I moved him back to arms length from me to which he promptly threw a punch that connected on my left cheek.

There’s a flight or fight response in situations like this…mine was fight.
The adrenaline kicked me into an instant rage.

I grabbed ahold of his hoodie and yanked on it trying to line him for up a couple return shots when I realized that he was off-balance. I threw all of my weight on top of him, tackling him, and driving him to the ground. I grabbed his arms to keep him from punching me and rolled on top of him. I put his arms underneath my knees and with my left hand, grabbed his throat and his right and my right hand raised up at a fist.

I screamed into his face, “This is OVER, RIGHT NOW!”

Yet he was defiant and yelling and screaming about what he was about to do to me in complete denial. He continued to struggle to free his arms…

I leaned down so that our eyes locked and I screamed into his face,

“THIS IS OVER RIGHT FREAKING NOW!”
(I didn’t say freaking)

But he continued to struggle to get his arms free so that his actions could meet his words.
…which brings you up to speed with the story.

In a situation like this…what would you do? How do you react when you’re suddenly in a altercation and find yourself in a rage?
Have you been here recently?

I’m not talking about everyday hierarchy work or leadership type of stuff…but the kind of power where you are in a position of absolute strength to dominate someone?

If you’re a boss and someone under you screws up royally, do you rip into them make them understand how you could screw up their life? Do you revel in your power?

In regards to mental capacity and intellectual knowledge, do you lord over the people around you making them feel insecure, show them how ridiculously stupid they are? Do you always use the occasion to demonstrate how smart you are and to demean people when they make mistakes?

If you’re a doctor do you always have to demonstrate how smart you are to everyone around you? Do you always have to show them how little they know compared to you?

If you’re a father and your young son does something that angers you, do you go off on him, let him know your anger, let him feel your wrath to the point that your child fears you?

Are you on an athletic team or sport where you are dominating another team…and you turn it up to demoralize them? Are you the ugly winner?

Examine yourself… what do you do with power where it is so easy for you to take and use on someone who cannot even defend themselves.

Which is where I found myself.

My anger and adrenalin hung in the balance of a destructive blow that I was about to deal to a man that had in the past provoked my anger, tried to intimidate and taunted me, and had now come onto my property and struck the first blow. I had trained and worked out over the years for a moment such as this…
…and that moment had arrived.

Right before my body and fist started down, he stopped talking…stopped struggling.
He finally knew what was about to happen.
We both knew what was about to happen.

My fist and my resolution were like a ball that had been thrown directly upward into the air…that moment when upward motion becomes downward motion…the moment where everything changes and the ball is neither rising nor falling…there..at that very moment…I held my anger, held back in my rage…and I saw that he needed mercy.

I held his throat… and my punch…my fist did not start on its downward path…I teetered at the precipice but did not fall into the abyss.
I mentally backed off the edge.
“This is over, and I’m going to let you up, and you’re going to go over to your yard” I stated.
It was not a question.

I let him up and the the lady grabbed his hoodie, pulling him into their yard.

I knew perfectly well that by giving him mercy, giving him a second chance, he could use it to go after me again.

And he did.

I went into my house, searching for my phone to call the police and there was a large crash against my house…I felt the impact shudder through the house. I came out to find a large rock have been thrown against my brand new special order side door that I had waited weeks for and had just installed. The door was damaged and jam was destroyed.

The police came and asked if I wanted to press charges. They then took statements, arrested him, and he spent two weeks in jail. Rather than do a trial I allowed him to plead guilty to the assault and agree to pay for the damages to the door.

They brought him to court in prison clothes, handcuffs, and shackles. The guy always looked strong and physically cut with a menacing scowl…but here…he looked tired and worn and old. The “mother” came to court as a witness, for me. She cried when she saw him…he shed tears over what he had caused her. She stated in court that she wanted him to move out and he said he understood. I have not seen him since that day in court. In a situation like this there would be no happy ending, just an ending.

There was something that haunted me for a couple weeks after the fight…. It wasn’t the thoughts of what could have happened to me or anything like that…it was what I almost did to him. It was that moment when I drew back to hit him…that moment that I felt my strength, my dominance over him…MY RAGE…I know that I would have seriously hurt him had I started hitting him. I have worked out and boxed and trained for such a moment…but to add the rage? The outcome could have been life altering for both of us.

At the precipice, in my rage, at that moment, I feel God checked me…not only for this man’s sake, but my own. I could’ve done something that I would have regretted, even if he started it, even if I was in the ‘right’. He gave me power and ability to exercise it exactly in a moment such as this, so I could not only subdue an enemy
but also
to show mercy to a man who needed it.

We are all given a measure of power:
Maybe Physical Strength
Maybe Money
Maybe Position
Maybe Knowledge and Wisdom

It can be used to govern and bring order….or it can be used to bring destruction and chaos.
It can be used to protect and serve…or it can be used to dominate and steal.
It can be used to bring honor and victory…or it can be used to emansculate and demoralize.
It can be used with a level head…or it can be used in an anger and rage.

Remember that you were given that measure of power from God and that you WILL stand in front of Him and be called to answer for how you used it.

So I ask you to imagine that day when you stand before Him…and He treats you like you’ve treated others…are you at ease?
…or no?

Because the measure that you give, will be the measure that you receive

Crash

I used to live in Oakley, recently moved to Pleasant Ridge.

When I lived in Oakley, I had a neighboring family that was your traditional mom and dad with a little boy and a little girl. The boy, I’ll call him Bart (because that’s his name), was maybe 5 and his sister was just a couple years older.

One mid afternoon day I’m working from home and I’m on the phone, talking business and all of a sudden notice flashing red lights outside. I say to my buddy, ‘looks like there’s an ambulance on my street’. As I go to the window, I notice it’s CLOSE, as in ‘one of my direct neighbors’ close. Then I notice the flashing lights are in front of my house…and then I realize that there are people in my yard. I hang up and go outside.

Outside there’s a chaos of events going on and a bunch of people have gathered to watch…and in the middle of it, are two EMTs that are trying to take a look at Bart, who’s crying and yelling, and limping around. The EMTs are befuddled and somewhat comical as they are trying to get him to sit down, let alone sit still, with the seeming inability to actually touch him. 10 feet away his mother is on the phone with her husband and in hysterics and crying and not knowing what to do or how to handle the situation. The only thing not making a sound is Bart’s bicycle laying in he grass with a bent tire and front end. Bart’s been hit by a car.

So Bart is limping around and crying and these paramedics are trying to get a look at him. BUT (big but) Bart’s hurting and scared and won’t let them. Every time they try to get him settled down and sit still they touch something that hurts and he jumps up and screams and tries to get away from them. And because no one is telling Bart what he should do and he’s exercising his free will, and keeps frantically moving away from the EMTs.

Bart’s hurting
He’s scared and confused
His bike is wrecked
He doesn’t want to be hurt or scared…he doesn’t want them to examine him because he doesn’t want to find out if he’s hurt
He doesn’t want there to be pain or understand if there’s consequences or what the future is…he just wants to pretend this didn’t happen, that he’s not hurt…and he sure as hell doesn’t want these men to check him out and tell him any different.

I’m watching this and realize that his mother can’t cope with what’s going on any more than Bart can. Because I know the family, I step in to help with Bart.

For a minute, I was an uncle, a dad, and I get Bart to settle down. He knows me but he’s scared…we finally settle him enough to let them check him out….but it’s not easy and he doesn’t want it…he doesn’t want to listen to me…but I get a little more stern and mentally he gets there. He screams and cries and wants this all to stop. He wants to be ok, to go on with his day, to pretend this didn’t happen and that he’s ok. He doesn’t want to be hurt.

But me and the EMTs get him to sit still. They assess the damage. They know what the next steps must be…and much to the dismay of the crying boy, he needs X-rays and professionals to evaluate him at the hospital.

He doesn’t want to go, but with a lot of crying protests, he gets put on a gurney, put into the ambulance, and taken to the hospital.

Within a few minutes, the ambulance and mom are gone and the bystanders filter back home as the surreal scene dissolves quickly.
The bike lays in my yard.

Later that day, he came home from the hospital…he had some bruises and a limp…but he was going to be ok. I told him his new nickname was ‘Crash’. He wasn’t sure he liked that nickname, but I was amused, which was all that was important at that point.

As it turns out, the car that hit him….was actually the car that GOT hit. Bart was on his bike and rode out onto the street without looking.
Bart had caused the accident. HE had hit the car, which then just about ran him over.

I hadn’t thought about that story in a while until this morning in my quiet time.

In the stillness, God brought the story back to me…remembering the moments of taking in, as a spectator, this child who’s world was crazy and hurting and confused…how there were professionals who wanted to help him, get him to sit still so they could assess the damage, address the hurt. I remember his confusion, his denial, his desire to have all this go away, go on as though nothing had happened.

God showed me something that I didn’t want to see: I (we) have been Bart so many times in life.

Life happens.
Sometimes it’s an accident
And sometimes it’s deliberate, cold, and barbarically brutal.
….And we are hit like child on a bicycle and our shiny world collapses for a moment.

Sometimes we shake it off and move on because it really wasn’t a big deal.
But sometimes…
sometimes
the carnage and destruction are wounds that really hurt us, crush our hearts, break our spirit…and we are hurt beyond our capacity to heal on our own.
And like the boy, we cannot deal with it, we burry, ignore, and cover up the pain, don’t get help…we go on as though nothing happened.
But it did.

When we get hurt, really hurt, like Bart, we want
go on with life and say it doesn’t matter
We tell ourselves “I’m good”
We tell ourselves “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” or “it is what it is”.
But, if we haven’t healed the wound properly, it festers deep within us…and privately, in our hidden rooms, we don’t get over it.

It comes out in anger towards a spouse or a slow driver in the fast lane.
It comes out as an addiction to alcohol, sex, or FB likes
It comes out in a lack of trust of men.. or women.. or dogs..or relationships
It comes out in panic attacks and anxiety and worry (which are all just words for fear)
It comes out in ways that separate us from God

If you’re reading this and something instantly comes to mind
…that one thing that happened a while ago…
…that persons face comes to mind…
…that terrible incident…
then maybe the medic (THE Medic) has tried to help you but you won’t allow Him.

God wants to address the hurt, wants to help you heal completely…not just cover over the wound.

I ask you to sit down…quiet your mind…take out all the cares and voices that are in your mind…and ask God, the Healer, into that place….back where THE INCIDENT happened, and let Him minister healing there.

You don’t need to carry this anymore
You don’t need to limp through life
You don’t need to ‘suck it up’ or ‘get over it’
You just need to heal

Bart ended up with a new bike, some physical boundaries, and a valuable lesson.
I can’t guarantee that you’ll get a new bike but maybe you’ll get a new cool nickname like ‘Crash’.

Sit still, let the Father take a look..this will only hurt for a moment…and then you can heal properly.

Running The Pigs (Pt 1)

We were immortal once.

We were young and reckless and full of mischief. It was before real life started…before jobs and careers, wives and kids, before broken hearts, and before any of us died. It was before we knew life could be hard…it was a time when we challenged all of our boundaries, all of the rules, all of the restrictions. We tasted freedom and wanted more…and we wouldn’t be denied.

Like I said, we were immortal once.

It was part of my coming of age time, from a sheltered Catholic school room of about 22 kids to the public high school where life was about to change drastically. I started playing soccer somewhere around 5th grade…I was a tall, lanky, and uncoordinated player on the field, but I had a couple coaches, Mike Bosch and Mr Wells that recognized that on the field I was less than capable…but as a goalie, where my long arms were an asset, there was hope. By the 8th grade, I had more guts than skill…but it carried me well in grade school and I was a halfway decent goalie. But I was about to learn that high school was different.

Lebanon high had just started their soccer program. The players were a bunch of hellions and partiers…we were a rowdy, rough looking lot. My freshman year, the shirts were left over from some other sport, old red and white striped long sleeve shirts with only a number on them. There were not enough for the whole team so guys being subbed in often had to trade off. The tattered candy striped shirts along with the rough looking group made us look more like a prison work gang than a soccer team. But I made the team…barely…on 3rd string. I was going to be sitting the bench a lot being 3 deep on the roster…but I made the team and felt good about it…I just needed a foot in the door.

So, unsure I would ever play, fate stepped in. One goalie quit, then one got hurt…then all of a sudden, I was freshman with the starting position. “Starting” goalie was technically accurate…but “only one left” or “no one else wanted to do it” goalie would also have been just as accurate.

I was still pretty green back then…but there I was…all thumbs and nervousness rolled into a goalie position, trying take recklessness and make it experience…trying to be the player the team needed.

But this isn’t a story about soccer…it’s a story about running the pigs…a ‘game’ we used to play.
SO
I’m this young naive kid who’s all of a sudden thrust into a starting goalie position and some of the older guys had to decide what to do with me to ‘toughen me up’ and help me get over the jitters. Tim, Mark, and Brian were those trainers that were going to bring me along, take me in.

Mark Wells, Tim Cole, and Brian Peters were like the three Musketeers. They were an inseparable, slap boxing-beer drinking-goofball buddies that were thick as thieves in all aspects of life…whether they were on the field playing with all their hearts, creating fun or mischief, or just figuring out how to have a laugh…and a buzz.

They were always tooling around in Brian’s old Maverick that had some kind of a race engine…and it often had to be push started. It was grey and blue and loud as hell with these ridiculous oversized Craiger Mags…they were always rolling around in that car.

But this isn’t a story about those guys…it’s about the game.

So..I’ve set the stage…I’m this young naive guy who wants to belong…and I live on Concord Drive. Tim Cole and his brothers live downtown Lebanon…and Mark and Brian are always spending the night with Tim. Why? Because the house that Tim’s family lives in is an old mansion of a house on Mulberry Street….and behind this house is a row of garages that Tim’s dad owns. There are probably 5 or 6 of these garages filled with God knows what, but one garage, one garage belongs to the boys. Let me rephrase that, one garage belonged to us.

So these guys started to invite me down to start hanging out at the garage. It’s the invite that is part initiation, part challenge. Looking back, I know it was a right of passage.

The ‘boys’ are Tim, Mark, Brian of course…along with Tim’s younger brothers Andy and Ben, and a few of their friends like Mark, Greg, Jerry, Dana, and Kent to name a few.

Now, most nights on the summer weekends, you could find any number of the boys, or their friends, in this garage putting their money together, chipping in change and dollar bills to go buy beer…and then with whatever you had left over, you would play cards until 2 or 3 in the morning.

Now, Kent and I didn’t live near them…it was about 2 miles or so…but what we would do is wait until our parents had gone to bed, sneak out our parent’s houses, meet up and then make our way down to the garage, drink and play cards, and then make our way home.

When it’s that late at night, it’s very rare that you would see anyone out. You might see a car or two in your 20 minute walk….but the one thing you were scouting out for was the unexpected run into Lebanon police cars.

Lebanon, as most towns did, used the infamous Ford Crown Victoria with the performance 350 V8 engine. It was the workhorse of most police forces in the early 80s and we became VERY familiar with this model.
We knew the sound of the engine.
We knew the pattern of the headlights.
We knew the outline of the car from blocks away.
We also got to the point that we made a game of identifying the car by it’s headlights. We could tell you what make and model of ANY car it was by the outline of the car and pattern of the headlights. BUT when it came to the Crown Vic? We knew one a mile away.

We were never wrong.

Why were we good at this? Because it was extremely important to never get stopped by the police. We were kids out after curfew without our parents knowledge. If you were caught you could be held by the police or taken home, written up…a number of things but ultimately our jailbreak freedom was contingent upon our parents never finding out. God’s honest truth, I would have rather gotten gotten shot by the police than get caught and face my dad. So when we were out, and a cop ran across us, we would SCATTER like cockroaches into the dark, running in all directions.

First time you run from the police, you think you’re going to die. You think they’re going to catch (or shoot) you, beat you up…that you would get shanked in jail…and if you survived that, your parents would literally kill you. Adrenaline rush like you’ve known.

So it happened ever now and then…and a funny thing happened. We didn’t get caught. Funny thing happened after that…we started doing it on purpose.

So every now and then we would play this game of informal cat and mouse with the police…to the point where we actually made it a game and called it “Running the Pigs”.

The game would go something like you would expect…Kent and I and anyone with us would start from our end of town and work towards the garage. If we had not had a thrill in a while, we would sit in the middle of the street just hanging out…and we would be laughing and carrying on just sitting in the street waiting for a car to come around the corner. These streets had different names like Broadway and Orchard…Deerfield and Mechanic….but the game was the same. We would sit and wait and carry on until a police car turned the corner or crossed our path. Then like banshees in the night, we would take into the night….across yards and alleys. Over fences and around houses and garages.

So me and a couple buddies (usually Kent) we lived south of downtown, south of a little creek that runs at the bottom of the hill on Broadway and Mechanic. On the south side of the creek, the yards are deep and wide, probably 1/4 to 1/3 acre lots, neighboring neighbors with the same size. Those lots didn’t usually have tall fences and some had alleys and walkways. All through these yards are trees and shrubs, so that flashlight/spotlight line of sight is limited. This is our ground, we knew the neighborhoods and layout. This is where we played the game.

So let’s say a cop spots you a half block away. You bolt across the front yard and through the backyard, and cut an oblique path across another backyard. Most often before the police get to where you had been 20 seconds ago, you’re already a good 30 yards into another backyard. EVEN if they would have gotten out of their car to chase you, which they never did, you were already way ahead of them. So instead of getting out and chasing, the cop would gun his Crown Vic cop 350 engine to go around the block to try to catch you when you come out on the other side. But you’re not dumb…you can hear him and see the lights (the Crown Vic ID skills I mentioned earlier) , double back or find a good hiding place and wait him out.

BUT the police had their game too. Those officers had names like Toller, Leak, and Bens. Whoever we came across always radioed for other officers to join in the hunt. It got trickier with multiple cars, they would circle and search for us with spot lights trying to smoke us out or sit with lights off waiting for us to cross a street down the way. I always wondered if secretly they thought it was fun too. Would they be excited to have something to chase, something to give their mundane nights a little excitement?
I still wonder.
(Come to think of it, if they had police dogs in those days we would have been toast! It would have been a game we would have probably played once…just once.)

So south of the creek, that was where we ‘Ran the Pigs’, where we played our game. BUT the garages we went to, they were downtown…the other side of the creek.

The downtown area was exactly what it is today. Large commercial buildings and parking lots, and lots and lots of light. There was not a lot of spaces to duck and hide…so on the north side of the creek, we usually were careful and didn’t mess around a whole lot.

So, one night, we’re out goofing off…it’s probably 12 or 1 or 2 in the morning…I think it had been a while since we had done anything and we’re just laughing and carrying on. It must’ve been really late because the town is dead, no cars, no cops anywhere, and, as far as we’re concerned, we own the night.

We decide to go up to the garage, wandering north of the creek into downtown area, thinking we would stop in and see if any of the older guys were at the garage that might buy us beer and, like I said, we’re just walking around downtown like we own the place. We’re laughing and taking jabs at each other, not a care in the world.

We’re about a block away from the garage… and a cop turns the corner about a 1/2 block in front of us, turning onto our street towards us. His headlights land on us like we’re on stage, (or in a line up?) blinding us like deer in headlights… and we’re sitting ducks, standing there open jawed caught.

For half a second the world stopped….I mean we literally froze in mid step, mid-conversation…felt like the whole world and heaven above skipped a beat…

everything

stopped.

…AND THEN THE WORLD EXPLODED as we scattered instantaneously and simultaneously in all directions, running into each other as we took flight. We were downtown and without the cover running and running like our lives depended on it. That car’s spotlight came on and lights and that just made us run faster. It seemed that Instantaneously there was another police car and spotlight circling the area searching bushes and dark building corners…we were the blood in the water and the sharks knew it.

As I remember, Ben and I fled in one direction for a second, then I lost him as we ducked behind buildings and cars and fled. One second I was running with someone, next I was alone. I knew that if I could make it to the Cole’s house, then I could get into the garage and hideout. I also knew instinctively that whoever did not get caught would rendezvous there.

It was one of those things where you would duck behind one car, then another moving in and out of the shadows of buildings and cars and fences and bushes. The cars must’ve spotted someone else because they moved away from me down the street. I waited for the right time and cross the street, down the alley into the Cole’s backyard and then crawled in the back window of one of the garages.

And then I waited.

A short time later a knock on the garage door brought the hair on my neck to stand up…my heart stopped and I didn’t know what to do… it turned out to be one of the guys.

Slowly, the boys came trickling in.
One by one, the handful of us found our way to the garage.
No one had been caught.

We may have celebrated our endeavor with beer and laughed it up all night…or we may have decided that tempting our fate once that night was enough, laying low just long enough that the police gave up and then we slunk home, I don’t really remember.

So…Why tell this story?

I look back on those years with rose colored glasses…we all were alive back then, not only alive, but filled with life and a sense of adventure that filled and overflowed from us….the world was open and inviting and you had this sense of awe and wonder of the possibilities that were before us. Our hearts were ignorant of any real pain and loss…in our worlds we were untouchable…we were immortal.

I think most of us have this time in life…the time when we were immortal…but something happens that changes that. I think, in my life, the death of Mark Wells, part of the Three Musketeers, was the end of that immortality. He wrecked a car my sophomore year, lost his life at 18 crashing into a tree on the way home one night.
…18…
So much of his life was in front of him…so much loss. His future and our world, our immortality,  it all came crashing down that night.

I look back and know that as young men, we needed an adventure, a journey to manhood. Society did not give us a path or a means of initiation to manhood, so we made up our own.

I have learned that even as a grown man, you need adventure, you need to be alive, you need to seek that out, in GOOD, healthy, LEGAL ways. (Besides, fleeing from the police is now a felony)

I have buried many friends…not so much from motorcycles or daredevil ways, but by heart attacks and vices and suicides.  I also know friends who have died in their chairs in front of the tv, or at the bar in a comatose neon light…their bodies living on, but their hearts long dead.
Are you there?
Are you alive?
…not just existing..nor just occupying space…not waiting for the next bad event…
Is this speaking to you?

Does life still hold a wonder for you, an adventure you still want to partake of?

Is there LIFE in your living?

GOD created you for more…are you seeking it out? Are you still learning and growing? Are you still reaching out giving a hand or asking for help? Are you contributing or consuming? Are you someone who’s known for giving life to your friends…or taking it?
Those are the questions right there…honest friends will give you honest answers. We need those kinds of friends.
”Rage, Rage against the dying of the light“, a line from the famous poem by Dylan Thomas reminds us to choose to live, to fight against the gravitational pull of death, against the constrictions of a broken world that is trying to suffocate your life. If you haven’t read this work in a while, maybe you should. I love what Dylan is implying and the fire for living…but let’s add a little divine into it because life is not always fighting against the dying of the light as much as it is protecting the light within you, guarding the wellspring of life, your heart.

There’s a saying that every man dies, but not every man truly lives. I choose to live fully, as much as I can.
Yes, I fight the demons assigned me
Yes, I wrestle with God
Yes, I wrestle deep within my heart and soul
I fail, I fall, I hurt, I bleed…and I am part of a fallen, broken world.
…..but…
I go forward because the Light that is within me will never be extinguished and the world needs to see this.

Those of us who have survived the days of “Running the Pigs” are older and wiser. We know that we are no longer immortal in this world.…but this I know:
I will not waste the kiss of life that God gave to me.
I will not cover the light that burns
I will not be overcome
I will not play it safe
I will struggle to fully live, to be fully alive

And when I leave this life, it will not be because death has triumphed, it will be because He called me home.

Rebuild

I had bought a house.

It is an old 3 bedroom, 1 bath, 2 story in a desirable part of town…but it needed a bit of work. It wasn’t even on the market, but I found it, put in a competitive offer against an investor, and came out with a house.

I was elated at first…the walls of the bathroom and kitchen were ‘white boxed’, a commercial term used for an interior space that was stripped of anything, painted white, and ready to have interior finishes and paint and put back together. You envision the cabinets that will go in, the tile you want, and how, in a couple weeks, or a month, you’ll be picking out countertops.

Or so I thought.

I tore out a small section of wall, wanting to evaluate opening up the wall a little so that the wall between the kitchen and dining room could be taken out and a counter bar installed. Once the wall was opened up, I noticed the plumbing and HVAC ducts were preventing this from happening…but it also revealed that some galvanized steel plumbing was still in use in the old house. This would have to be removed. So I took out more wall and part of the kitchen ceiling to get at the pipe.

After part of the kitchen ceiling was taken out, you could see some of the plumbing for the upstairs bathroom. Looking at it, I noticed some of the plumbing looked wonky, so I brought in a buddy who knew his stuff to evaluate what was there. Much to my displeasure and surprise, he pointed out some gross inadequacies and bad installation that would create bad problems in the future. All of the plumbing would need to be reworked.

So I had to tear out the finished kitchen ceiling, along with the fact that I had now cut out almost all of the plumbing.

Now in cutting the plumbing out, I noticed that once I did, I could clearly see that the platform that the upstairs toilet sat on was cracked in several places. So after evaluation, I took this out.

When I took this out, it was clear to see that the tops of the joists that sat under the toilet were ‘soft’ from years of neglected water leaking. I had to re-enforce several joists.

All this sounds simple as I explain it….but let me explain it with a little more of the building stress that was creeping in.

Each layer that I took out, each area of rework, each things I had to take out…created a new level of anxiety for me. I thought I had a white complete canvas that I could start to build on, but, as it turns out, it was a blank canvas that was built over an imperfect substructure. It looked ‘fine’ but underneath it all? It was faulty.

You could peel back a layer to examine what is beneath and see and that needed to be re-worked…to then peel back another layer to examine what was beneath, to see and THAT needed re-work…the get to the basic structure of the house….and see that time and neglect had created a structure and THAT would need to be rebuilt.

As the layers were pulled back one at a time, my anxiety grew, and I fretted the work that would need to be done and the money spent for each new fix…the anxiety grew to the point of mini panic attacks, and fear gripped me of the lost money and days of my life to get to a point of where some day in the distant future I would finish the project, although by that time I would be broke, old, and senile.

When faced with a situation like this, you’re tempted to NOT fix things, to patch over, or just cover up so that you can move on without having to do so much hard work. You think, “it’s lasted 100 years this way, should be ok”, but, to build on any of this, was to build on faulty structural support, faulty system that, even with the appearance that it was ok…was fundamentally, and possibly, dangerously flawed. In this type of situation, you can choose to build on the faulty, which might buy you some time…or you could strip things to the core and rebuild for a lifetime.

What would you do?

God speaks to me through things that happen in my life…this was no exception.
I often ask God for help in turning a corner, and He hears me, and answers. But, when God answers, He often takes up our offer in the most unexpected way.

To renovate a house, you often need to take out several layers of neglect to get to the root of the issue…often going back to the structure on which the house is built.

To renovate a mans life, sometimes the same thing needs to happen.

My life is much like the kitchen in the beginning. The kitchen was ‘white boxed’ where you think it’s ready to be built into, just add in cabinetry and countertops and you’ve got a kitchen…but it often takes tearing into the issue, pulling back a couple layers to find you’ve got a bigger problem that’s at the core of things.

In my case, I wanted to move ‘forward’ in life. We all have our ‘forward from here’ plans and thoughts don’t we…that next level that we believe will crest a hill, a giant problem that we feel has always stood in our way will open up a live we’ve always envisioned we should have? We work and work, and build our lives top of faulty thinking. I had this Field of Dreams type vision where I hope God’s telling me “build it and things will come”…but that’s not reality.

So, I bought this house thinking I could spend a couple months on it and it would be perfect and ready to go…no wonder I had moments where anxiety overcame me.

So the more I worked, the more I sweated (I lost 15 pounds…by the way I have a new gym idea!) the more my plan deteriorated in front of me. I tore out part of a wall to learn I had to tear out some plumbing, to tear out a ceiling in the kitchen to get at the plumbing, to realize the plumbing was ALL wrong and had to be torn out, to realize the toilet seating was cracked and tear that out to realize some of the joists needed to be repaired. This took place over about a month and a half.

And similar to the house, each level of repair was taking me to a new place of loss of control, farther away from my goal and further away from my ‘happiness’. Each level required more help, more money, more TIME…everything that I had hoped to build on was being stripped down…to the point where I was really wondering if I had made a terrible mistake.

One morning I read in the Bible “unless God builds a house, a man labors in vain” and I knew that verse was speaking to me.

I was wanting to continue to build upon the old life, to cover the problems and move ‘forward’.
I was building the house to have ‘wealth’.
I was building the house to have ‘financial freedom”
I was building the house thinking it would be easy
I was building the house to impress my friends
I was building without asking God how it should be done.
I was building the house like I was building my life…and it was time to renovate both

There are times in my life where I’ve asked for help, asked for His council in things..and things actually get worse.
Can you relate?

You ask for help in relationships, and things go from bad to worse
You ask God for a new job and the one your in gets worse and there’s no exit
You ask for help in discerning if a relationship is right or not…and the answer is ‘not’.
the answer is pain
the answer is frustration
the answer is confusion

I am absolutely NOT saying that every single situation is about God using pain to get our attention…but I am saying that we should examine every hard situation, every confrontation, every unchecked fear…because there’s often something underneath.

For where we need to peel back a few layers and really examine where we are covering things up…where we are in need of repairs and rebuilding, just like an old house.

The bad news is some times you have to strip things down, tear out everything down to the structure before you can rebuild. Every single character in the bible has a time of being stripped down…stripped of ego, stripped of wealth, stripped of family, land, freedoms…

If you have been torn down and stripped, if you’re going through a renovation, if you’re in the mist of what looks bad…then know that sometimes the foundations of your past cannot be what your future is built on.

The good news is that the builder, the original architect of your life will be there with you to guide and lead you through this.
God says:
… that he has numbered our days.
…knit us together in the womb
…we are ‘fearfully and wonderfully made”
…He has plans to prosper us, and not to harm us
…plans to give us a hope and a future

As I was deconstructing a part of the house, I came across several boards that had a name written on them of “JW Jenkins”. Jenkins, my last name, was written in several places on that house.

You could choose to see that as a coincidence…
or
…you could choose to see that over 100 years ago that God knew, and could see, that I would be working on a house that would need a little boost and encouragement to finish the house the way the architect had built it.

I don’t believe in coincidences
I will finish the house right.

Endeavor

Do you ever see that dog hanging out of the car window? Maybe you do that now, where you let the dog sit in the front seat with the window open? Can you picture him, tongue hanging out, nose up in the wind taking all the smells and light and energy? Are you like me what when you see the dog YOU smile when you pass them because you see the dogs’ smile? Does the dog’s smile make you smile?
Of course it does, right?

When I see a dog doing that, I smile because I know he’s in dog heaven. He’s taking it all in, moving at the speed of light, slobbering on the the window…and to me, that’s a little of what it’s like to ride a motorcycle…minus the slobbering on the window.

As you ride on a good day, the light and sun comes down on you and the sun and shade hit your body creating warmth and coolness. The bike cuts the air and tires gripping the pavement, moving with you like a dance. The engine beckoning for the open throttle, a little passion. The dance is leaning out over corners and challenging the hold gravity and momentum have on a normal person…because you’re not normal and you’re not doing something normal, you’re defying gravity and normal constraints. A smile often stays on your lips. You’re that dog doing something he KNOWS is not normal for him, just as riding is not normal for you…both of us know we’re being given a moment that’s pure pleasure and we’re going to drink it in.

When you ride a motorcycle there are usually a few common responses. One response is “cool” and they ask what kind of bike you have, they tell you about what you have, you share a story, and you know they’re ‘in the club’.

Another response is the yearning look in their eye of how they want/had one but made choices in their lives (or had a choice made for them) and they yearn to be back out on the bike but costs are too high for themselves or their family. These two responses are almost always from men (USUALLY, but not always)

The next set of responses are a mixed bag, gender-wise, but these responses are all based on a fear of getting hurt, or getting killed. Of this second group, It seems that everyone wants to tell you how unsafe it is and about the wreck that happened to their brother’s uncle in-law mechanic’s sister’s boyfriend that they grew up with…I hear it all the time. I could take offense to it, tell them about odds and tell them how I’m pretty safe and not an idiot on the road and how I’m always aware of what’s going on around me….

….or I could let everyone just think that I’m ok with the risk, say how the odds don’t apply to me.
I like the second choice but the first is probably closer to the truth.

Side note: As a seasoned rider, I will tell you honestly that most of us have come to terms with our own mortality and the risk we are taking. I hate to tell all of you this, but we are all going to die.

Why am I saying all of this?
Let me ‘land the plane’ with my thoughts.

When I owned a bike as a kid, I rode and loved it. Rode it til it died one day in a corn field in Lebanon Ohio, God rest it’s 125cc heart. Going through college, I had a roommate named Scott Schroeder who had a motorcycle. In the last year of our time at Ohio State, he and I talked of riding across the country when we graduated. It was a wish more than a plan because I didn’t own a bike at the time, nor did I have the financial resources for the bike…let alone a cross country trip. But that didn’t stop us from talking about it.

Six months out of college, Scott was driving his car home one night and got killed by a drunk driver. He was 24. I lost a great friend and the trip we wanted to take? Never happened.

Responsibilities and jobs and careers and girlfriends and many years later, I was about to turn 40 and that ghosts of the woulda, coulda, and shoulda’s were haunting me. I had given thought to that cross country ride over the years but felt that ‘responsible’ thing to do was wait until I had a family, wait until the kids were out of college…THEN I would get the motorcycle. Then I would do a grand adventure.

Getting ready to turn 40 it dawned on me that I was waiting for things to happen in my life before I would do other things….and if those primary events did not happen, the secondary would also never happen. When it came to the bike and trips, I decided I would no longer wait. Within a week Rick S. decided he was selling his bike and asked if I wanted to buy it. I’m not saying that the heavens parted and I heard a voice, but I knew I didn’t need to wait for a full sign from God…a hint was sufficient.

The first couple times I took the bike out, I was sure that SOMEONE was going to kill me. I thought of all the ways I could get hurt or killed…but then a funny thing happened. I didn’t die.

People are SOOOOOOOoooo afraid of dying. Supposedly it’s the second highest fear behind public speaking…which is odd to me…but everyone is afraid of SOMETHING. We even have words we’ve made up for unusual fears. Seems you would be challenged to have a fear that’s not already recorded. Lots of those fears are well founded…they keep us out of trouble, keep us from doing dumb things. Some fears are hindering us and we need to conquer those fears. They tell us most fears are never realized…we just fear certain things that we never have to confront.

In looking at my fear of dying while riding my bike, I realized I was faced with a fear that was keeping me from living, pursuing dreams, doing something that made me feel alive.

I don’t want to say that I no longer fear death…that’s far from the truth, I have a healthy fear of death and the way that I go, so if you catch one thing, catch this please.

I don’t fear death as much as I fear missing out on living.

God gave MEN a sense of adventure, of danger, and the need to confront it…to challenge death, to do something that makes our hearts beat with adrenaline…it makes us come alive. The Bible says that man was created outside the garden…was we have a need for the wild, the wilderness…even if it’s just a feeling.

If you are dying inside, if you are bored out of your mind then maybe you need to get a shock to your system. There is a phrase in the bible that says ‘wake up sleeper and rise from the dead and let Christ’s light shine over you”.

Are you sleeping? Are you the walking dead? Has life lost it’s ups and downs where you’re flatlining through it?

“Every man dies, not every man really lives.” Is a quote attributed to William Wallace. I would challenge all who are reading this to figure out what gift you have, what special talent, what seed has God placed in you…and breath life into it again.

What is it you are not doing that you should be?
What fear of failure is choking out ‘life’?
Why is it we die with so many unused talents?
So many unwritten books?
So many great humanitarian ideas?
So many curvy crazy roads not ridden?

You don’t have to play roulette, ride a crotch rocket at 120, bungee jump, run the bulls in Pamplona, swim with Great Whites…
…but to be alive is sometimes to lean out over the edge, where the air is crisp, the adrenaline keeps you awake, and you live in the present, in the juicy moments of life.

Mark Twain said “Let us endeavor so to live so that when we come to die even the undertaker is sorry”

The definition of Endeavor:
“to exert oneself to do or effect something; make an effort; strive”

In looking at this definition, where are you?
Are you striving to live…or just trying not to die?

Endeavor…
…exert yourself
…affect something
…strive to live.

Endeavor to live friends.

Two Stories

An adventure had formed.

With my BMW R1200GSA sold, I was free to find the next motorcycle to put in the stable, the new iron horse that could further my travels in adventure biking.

My next machine? A KTM Adventure 990 Baja edition.
It’s location? Minneapolis.
The adventure? A one way ticket to get the bike, followed by a 12 hour multi day ride through stormy weather to get it home.

Shut my mouth and paint me KTM orange….now THIS was going to be an adventure!!!

I packed gear for 2 days, refining my single bag (dry bag of course with the rain (or snow?)) of my best gear. It was looking like the trip would start out in near freezing conditions with light snow (or freezing precipitation) that would change over to light rain the first few hours then change over to overcast with intermittent light rain (all the way home) as temperatures would slowly rise to the 60s over the first 6-7 hours of an 11+ hour trip.

How many thermal layers would I need? How many layers did I have if I got soaked through? How many gloves would be needed? I had packed just enough but also included a lot of little tiny treasures that could become essential like hot hands, phone charger, and iPod. I even went out and bought a new helmet.

The day of departure I actually went to the airport a couple hours early because I could no longer wait at home anymore…the excitement was overwhelming .

The flight was uneventful, I caught a cat nap, but upon landing in Minneapolis, the excitement ratcheted up and the guy picked me up at the airport. We chatted, (actually I chatted) most of the way to his house. We arrived in a nice suburban area in Minneapolis. His garage door opened, and sitting in the center of his garage was this beautiful Baja version of the bike with it’s white panels with orange crash bars. I walked around two times, amazed at its condition… I was amazed that the plastic panels were in new condition and the bike itself looked like it had barely been ridden.

I was smiling.

The owner explained every little thing to me on the bike and demonstrated how some of the parts worked and then started it up. The engine growled and jumped with the goose of the throttle.

I was in love…or as much as a man can be with a machine….I would take this beautiful bike out for a minor test drive I would come back and figure out how to start my journey. I went inside to put on all my gear.

Did I mention that I was smiling?

I came out, he pointed me in a couple directions, and with the bike warmed up, I adjusted mirrors and put it into gear. I rolled out of his garage and started down the road and went around the corner to where there was a highway. I shot down the on ramp and darted quickly into the traffic to get the bike up to speed and the engine reached operating temperature. There was a smile on my face as I was thinking of the next 12 hours of getting this baby home…

And then I noticed it.

My hands were trembling (not with the cold) from movement in the handlebars and the GPS that hung from the windshield was dancing with the vibration. I had been so preoccupied with the bike in listening to the sound of the engine for any misfire in the roar, running up and down the gears feeling the clutch and shift and the RPMs, that I initially miss it. Once the bike passed my initial checklist, I started paying attention to other things and picked up on it. The smile began to fade a little bit is I investigated…it wasn’t in the wheels or tires…so it was very probably in the engine or transmission. I pulled in the clutch and the vibrational went away. I let the clutch back out and the vibration came back.

My smile faded.

Long story shortened, I got back to the guys house is a rolled into the garage and he came out with a big smile on his face and I calmly stated something was wrong. He stopped smiling and went back inside. I spent the next 45 minutes calling buddies, KTM dealers, and the consensus was that something was amiss.

In the end…I did not buy the bike…I walked away.

That evening and the next morning, I spent time at my uncle Bob and Aunt Judy’s who were awesome in their hospitality.  I got to enjoy getting to know them a little bit better…laughing and talking about family and some little known history around my grandfather and great grandmother.   We shared our thoughts of faith and how maybe I should spend more time looking for a wife than a motorcycle.  LOL!   It was fun.  It was family.

Next morning, faced with the reality that I was not riding a motorcycle home, I weighed out the cost of a plane ticket versus renting a car. If I took a flight, it would be quick, but expensive. If I took a car, it would allow me to visit a cousin of mine, Lisa.

Lisa was 2nd of three born to Larry and Marianne, my uncle and aunt. When we were younger, our families would spend time together, take vacations together, spend time at their cabin. In my younger years, they were a big part of the fun things we used to do that I remember. Lisa and I were buddies in those years and I remembered our friendship as an awesome part of growing up.

In 3rd grade, my family moved to Ohio, and shortly after that, a family rift over my grandfather ended vacations with them. So, many years ago, a friendship took pause over family politics, family conflict, and taking sides. As kids, you don’t understand things like that…it was something bad that happened that you had no control over.

There’s a lot of story between then and now that is important, but hard to explain and few understand. Lisa and Pat had family problems with her parents, Larry and Marianne, to the point that boundaries were set..and those boundaries became walls…and 15 years slipped by.

And then Larry passed away without resolution to a conflict that most in the immediate family did not understand.

5 years ago, when Larry passed, I ran into Lisa and her family at the funeral. She didn’t recognize me…but she hadn’t changed. It was not the time nor place, but we caught up a little that day.

Now here it was years later and I’m passing through on my way home….on a botched motorcycle adventure…and I felt it really important to stop and spend an hour with Lisa.

That hour turned into 5 hours of talking, processing, laughing, and sometimes crying about family, loss, grief, conflict, and God. It was probably the most important 5 hours of this year.

It was a chance for Lisa to tell her story
It was a chance to bring peace and light to an unresolved conflict.
It was a chance to laugh and cry again with a dear old family member.
It was a chance to have incredible insight into my family
It was a chance to look into the emotional mirror of two lives so similar…and understand that there are always two sides to a story.

In listening to her and catching up, I saw that both of us could understand, both of us could empathize, both of us could offer healing to each other.

In this situation, in this story, God used someone who basically lied to me about a motorcycle to get me to go to Minnesota, so that He (God) could bring me to my cousin’s house so that the two of us could connect and share some of the lost parts of our lives with each other.

In my head, I am the center of this story and I had my plans and thoughts, I thought I was at the center of the world. But I forget that it is not my world, it is Gods…and I have bowed and submitted and asked Him to change my world, use my life, and this self centered man (yes me) has asked that my life be more full.

I thought a beautiful low mileage mint 2013 KTM 990 Adventure Baja Limited edition with its white panels, orange crash bars, orange anodized Renthal handlebars, Garmen GPS, roughly 115 HP, 6 speed transmission, TKC 80 tires on the black shiny 21 inch front rim, extended footrests, CJ Designs bash plate………and steering damper……….and TKC tires………(did I mention under 6000 miles?)…….
I thought this beautiful new bike would make my life more full. But what do I know…
He saw what my heart needed, and it wasn’t a new toy.

The trip to Minneapolis was a divine appointment…and not just for me.

In my story about a trip to Minnesota, you could choose to see a motorcycle deal gone wrong…or you could choose to see my story of friendship restored.

You could choose to see a lie that brought me to loose time and money…or see truth in the reason that brought me to Minnesota to reconnect with family.

In a story about lost time between friends, you could choose to see the years lost or the 5 hours gained.

In a story about a cousin long removed from a family, you can choose to see the family that raised her, or the family she raised.

You could choose sides in an old conflict and lose one person from your life….or you could see that there are two sides to every story….
…and with grace and mercy
…you can see that there’s room to love both.

Life is full of choices…
Beginnings or endings…
peace or war…
life or death…

…be careful how you choose…if you must choose at all.

A Dark Basement

I was dating someone recently and something happened that tells me that I either need medication, my mind is getting soft, or God’s work is beginning to take shape.

The first or last options are more favorable than the middle.
Then again, maybe they’re all happening to some degree.

So I was dating this woman and I got into an argument with her. It was our first one, and it was a good one. A day later I was still kinda stewing about things…and then it happened.

I saw myself.

I mean I REALLY saw myself.
What I mean is that we usually see ourselves as the ‘victim’ or some caped crusading seeker of justice with our “justified” thoughts and actions as WE THINK they are.
…but
Once the blinding light of my own pride, my own indignation faded…I saw there, outside of the light…a shadow…a darkness you don’t see unless you REALLY look.
I saw it.

I saw my motivations and selfishness.
I saw my anger.
I saw a hurt child lashing out in his confusion and pain…
That child was me…and it was not pretty.

As I was writing this, God reminded me of a story….so I’m going to switch gears for a second and then I’ll come back to the argument…

When I was 9 or 10, we lived in Lebanon in an old mansion that sat on the corner of Cook and Deerfield Roads. Across the street from a housing division that was being built from that corner towards the YMCA. There was dozens of houses all being built at the same time for several summers. Being the entrepreneur I was, I used to go collect the returnable pop bottles the workers would drink and discard every day. They were returnable glass bottles worth maybe 10 cents a piece and I could collect a couple bucks a day to spent the money on fish for my aquarium, orange Fago sodas, Star Wars cards, and candy.

One day a couple of us kids were playing in the houses…we must’ve been playing some kind of cops and robbers sort of game, when something I’ll never forget happened.

Someone was chasing me, think it was Kevin Revis (but could have been Mark Mason) and I was darting through a couple houses to get away. All the houses were just studs and plywood, many had no roof and I ran into this house thinking I had enough of a lead to safely hide, so I decided to duck into a basement. So, I ran through this house, jumped into the square hole cut into the first floor for the stairs, and ran down the steps.

It was summer and must’ve been mid-day on the weekend because the sun was bright and overhead, so as I got to the bottom of the steps, there was a square of bright light formed by the hole in the first floor where the stairs came down. Standing at the bottom of the steps, I stood for a second just looking into the darkness. Coming out of the mid-day sun, my eyes could not adjust, and darkness was all I could see. I could not see the walls, the floor, or ANYTHING just outside of the square of light.

I must’ve heard my pursuer enter the house, because I stepped into the darkness and put out my hands and walked blindly forward until I touched the cool damp surface of the wall. I felt around in the darkness for a place or way to hide myself but the basement was completely empty…I was trapped and turned back to the stairs and the square of light.

Whoever pursued me raced through the house and then bounded down the steps to the bottom, stopped and stood, in the square light, looking out into the darkness searching for me.

I remember seeing him as clear as if it had been yesterday…I could SEE his excited face as he scanned the dark where I stood. He took a step out of the square of light, then stopped. I could SEE and FEEL his fear of leaving the light as he tried to bring himself to challenge the darkness..and then shrank back. I could FEEL his triumphant victory slipping…slipping into fear.
…but I stood perfectly still and quiet.

He screamed out into the concrete basement claiming victory!!!!! He had found me!!!! He knew I was there!!!! His shrill child voice was amplified by the concrete walls. He had stopped at the base of the stairs, and standing in the light, he was maybe 15 feet from me and I was standing RIGHT in front of him as he faced my direction.

In those brief seconds…in that moment…I could see him PERFECTLY as he stood under the sun’s square spotlight
…but he, in his blindness…
he could not see me.

So, back to my story of needing medication or getting soft (…or both…)

Pulling these stories together….in my argument with the woman, I was the child at the base of the stairs in the spotlight of the sun. And at the base of the stairs, I was yelling in the darkness. In my self-righteousness, I was calling out my victory!!! MY win! I was demanding surrender!!!!
….but all the while, I was blind.

Now today, a day later, I am the person in the darkness. I stand in the shadow of the basement, in the shadow of time, and it’s like I am looking at myself, observing that child standing in that square spotlight and arguing with her as one in the same.

I’m looking at myself arguing with her and i can clearly see today what I did not then.

I can see my fear.
I can see my hollow victory.
I can see me searching in the darkness.
I can see myself afraid of what I cannot see.
…And it’s not a good thing to watch.

Relationships are not easy. There’s the good like comfort, love, support, companionship, affirmation, touch, camaraderie, friendship
But the good often comes with the bad like betrayal, abandonment, distrust, anger, hurt, confusion…all of these are based in fear…

In relationships, like the child in the spotlight calling into the darkness, a lot of times we have to press into our fears, our hurts….abandon our island of light and hollow victory and step into a place of discomfort and disorientation. Like a child bathed in our own blinding light, we have to step into the dark…
…that we might see the other person.

In relationships, like the child in the dark where I could clearly see my friend…God’s light often illuminates them (or ourselves) and we see clearly that they are scared and fearful. They cannot see us as they are blinded and unwilling to step into, and through their fears.

God continues to work on me and my life. It’s often hard and painful to work through dark places in my heart, places where I got hurt, where my pride has blinded me, places where someone was supposed to be safe, where someone was supposed to be our friend betrays us…but God loves us enough to take our burdens and help us lay them down.

Light is a funny thing…
Sometimes the light makes us blind.
Sometimes the dark helps us see.

I Corinthians 4.5. …”wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart.”