The Cabin In The Evergreens Part Two

My eyes flicker. I've been sleeping beyond my alarm clock. I've been sleeping for ages. This has happened a few times. I wake up without an alarm, feeling too well rested, and look at the clock that makes me late for everything. Eyes dart open surveying my surroundings. A dark corner. A blinking alarm clock. A velvet painting of a deer with another deer. I survey my position. I am on my side facing what appears to be the back of a rough fabric couch. I am wearing a flannel, jeans, and some boots made of rubber and leather. I open my eyes fully and look around. There is a television with an antenna, a deer bust, and a picture of a guy in a wooden barrel scrubbing himself with a brush.

This isn't my life.

I live on 39th street in New York City. I have a wife and three kids and two dogs. I work at a law firm as a new lawyer. I have impressed my bosses a dozen times and have been insinuated a promotion. I wear a suit and tie to work and take pride in my appearance. I am young and good looking and intelligent. I am what everyone in Harvard University looks like. I work hard at looking the role.

I wake up completely. The way a person wakes up when the smell of coffee has become too strong to resist. There is no coffee here though. Here, as I look around, seems to be nowhere. I am nowhere. I am a man in a flannel laying on an old sofa in a cabin in the woods with no other sound but my own sober breath. Where am I and how did this happen? I remember sitting in my chair with a bottle of whiskey. That's it. That's all.

I lost a big case. The first big case I was assigned to. I had worked on many, but this one was mine: I was in charge of it. A kid went missing and I was sure it was the father who did it and not my client. They found the body in the river miles down stream. The killer? A 15 year old that confessed dumping him there; paralyzed in guilt. They all laughed at me after that. I went home and sat down with a bottle of whiskey and leaned back in my chair.

I am surrounded now by evergreen trees. I don't recognize where I am. I call for my wife. Nothing. I call for my children. Nothing. I roll over and reach my feet, legs feeling 100 years old. I look outside the window after clearing the cobwebs from the sill and see nothing but wilderness. Trees, Just trees. Where were my wife and kids? Why did I feel so old? The refrigerator is empty. There are no tracks in the dirt that surrounds the cabin. There is no phone to call out. One single box of Rice Chex in the cupboard. I realize that no matter how I got here, I am screwed. I know this because this has always how I've pictured hell. Now I am here.

For a fleeting moment it occurs to me that I've always been here...the hell, not the cabin. I've been sterile for some time; letting work consume me. I've neglected everything but manilla envelopes with red strings that tie around little spheres. I walk over to the bathroom and pull the little rusted chain that operated the buzzing dull bulb that lit the room. My reflection is blocked from the mirror that hung over the sink, caked with dust. I wipe away the center and look into my own eyes to see who I really am in this cabin. I have a habit of being different people in different places.

Today my eyes looked panicked. My face is bearded and hair is long, but well groomed and free of oil. It appears I have shaved my neck around my Adam's apple; a spot my wife detested when I would neglect the razor for a few days in law school. I was always afraid of shaving off the flesh around the bones that constructed my windpipe. The jugular was a concern as well. I have compulsions which make me want to do things harmful to myself. I literally test fate and run the razor once or twice fast down my face, leaving small cuts several times. I was afraid of these compulsions during shaving my neck. One false move and I could have two cupped hands full of blood.

My appearance took my attention away from my current existence for a moment. This may have been due to the fact that I'd always wanted to live in a cabin in the woods and wear flannels and not shave and answer to no one. After this momentary fascination, I feel my heart sink again. I walk to the door to the right and realize that this house is the exact architecture of my other house. Except this one is here and that one is there. Am I here or there? They both all of the sudden feel familiar. This home feels as much as home as the other, which gets more distant in my memory as the moments pass by. I shake the cobwebs and enter my daughter's room. Her bed. Her bed is there! Her things are kinda there! But strange recreations of her things. They are made of wood and sticks and berries and leaves. But they are her's! This place is beginning to feel familiar again and warm. I rub my beard in the doorway and wonder about the woods. No particular part of the woods comes to mind, just whether people in other places of the woods could hear me if I shouted. I feel sadness for my daughters little stick dolls, but I also feel at home.

I try really hard to remember the decor in my other home. My sofa is leather, brown with fake weathering. I have an oil painting of the New York Skyline, pre-911 on my wall. My daughter's room is a violet color with American Girl dolls lining the wooden shelf lining the walls of her room. More dolls on her bed, and more in her closet. Pictures of mommy line the walls and a single picture of me...daddy, on her art desk. She has drawn me almost perfectly. Almost. Except for the beard. I never understood why she drew the beard.


Sing.
Migrate.


Thanks for reading...Z

The Cabin in the Evergreens

My eyes flicker. I've been sleeping beyond my alarm clock. I've been sleeping for ages. This has happened a few times. I wake up without an alarm, feeling too well rested, and look at the clock that makes me late for everything. Eyes dart open surveying my surroundings. A dark corner. A blinking alarm clock. A velvet painting of a deer with another deer. I survey my position. I am on my side facing what appears to be the back of a rough fabric couch. I am wearing a flannel, jeans, and some boots made of rubber and leather. I open my eyes fully and look around. There is a television with an antenna, a deer bust, and a picture of a guy in a wooden barrel scrubbing himself with a brush.

This isn't my life.

I live on 39th street in New York City. I have a wife and three kids and two dogs. I work at a law firm as a new lawyer. I have impressed my bosses a dozen times and have been insinuated a promotion. I wear a suit and tie to work and take pride in my appearance. I am young and good looking and intelligent. I am what everyone in Harvard University looks like. I work hard at looking the role.

I wake up completely. The way a person wakes up when the smell of coffee has become too strong to resist. There is no coffee here though. Here, as I look around, seems to be nowhere. I am nowhere. I am a man in a flannel laying on an old sofa in a cabin in the woods with no other sound but my own sober breath. Where am I and how did this happen? I remember sitting in my chair with a bottle of whiskey. That's it. That's all.

I lost a big case. The first big case I was assigned to. I had worked on many, but this one was mine: I was in charge of it. A kid went missing and I was sure it was the father who did it and not my client. They found the body in the river miles down stream. The killer? A 15 year old that confessed dumping him there; paralyzed in guilt. They all laughed at me after that. I went home and sat down with a bottle of whiskey and leaned back in my chair.

I am surrounded now by evergreen trees. I don't recognize where I am. I call for my wife. Nothing. I call for my children. Nothing. I roll over and reach my feet, legs feeling 100 years old. I look outside the window after clearing the cobwebs from the sill and see nothing but wilderness. Trees, Just trees. Where were my wife and kids? Why did I feel so old? The refrigerator is empty. There are no tracks in the dirt that surrounds the cabin. There is no phone to call out. One single box of Rice Chex in the cupboard. I realize that no matter how I got here, I am screwed. I know this because this has always how I've pictured hell. Now I am here.



To Be Continued...




Sing.
Migrate.



 Thanks for reading...Z

The Beauty in the Battle

When did life stop being about the hard work you put into it? It just isn't valued by many anymore. When the wind hits your face, we want to retreat. This is common to every person, but it doesn't mean you retreat. Things get hard. Life gets hard. No one should have ever promised you different. Rich or poor, sick or well, life gets hard for us all. It is equally hard. The poor may think the rich have nothing to complain about, yet the middle to upper class white man is at the greatest risk for suicide. The rich think the the poor have it made, not having to deal with all of these decisions. They just have to accept the hand-outs. Meanwhile, the poor are standing in lines applying for things they will get rejected the first three times they apply, even though they qualify. They will try to figure out a way to pay the rent AND feed their children.

It doesn't matter who is against the wind, it will blow when it blows. We are in this together. We all get covered in whatever the wind blows on us. We all face the earth together and fistfuls of dirt is no different than fistfuls of money.

We are separated by one thing...our pride. Some choose to ask for help and others don't. Help is always near. The issue is with the whether the person is willing to ask for it.

I was always taught, both in words and deeds, that you face what the world throws at you and keep moving forward. Some things are going to be harder than others. You are going to want to quit...don't. When the going gets tough, you shout at it as loud as you can and run toward it. When life hands you lemons throw them back and pursue the one that threw them. You fight until you can't stand, then you get back up and keep fighting. You never, ever, ever give up for any reason. If there is something you want in life, you fight for it. You put in the hard work for however long and you will end up with your obstacles under your feet.

Our culture seems to feel differently. We seem to want what we don't deserve and demand what others have worked for.

The saddest part is that these people don't understand the beauty they are missing in the battle.


Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

She

It was a balmy summer night when I met this girl. She was wearing a lavender dress that matched the wedding flowers that lined the aisle she sat beside. Neither of us were emotionally available at the time; both had things to work out in our lives. We met anyway. We danced all night and into the next several months.

There was this thing she did that made me laugh so hard that I couldn't hold on to the annoyance it would have usually caused. She habitually and historically got everything wrong. If there were a name to a movie, she would mispronounce it. If she were trying to say Dax Shepard, she would say Dax Sanders. She sang the wrong lyrics in a song, just loud enough for me to hear and cringe, then grin because of how wrong it was. She would sing ACDC's lyric "She was a fast machine..." as "She was a fax machine..." It was so frustrating, but completely adorable as well.

She had these eyes that would look into mine at the important parts, then glance down as if she were embarrassed that she made contact with mine. We dated for a year before I gave her a ring. For an entire year, she was subjected to my dancing and lip syncing songs as she sat unamused.

She drove most places because I am not sure my driver's license was on the up and up, and intimidated me with her brains. She was different than me. We were altogether different. At first, this was a problem for both of us. We both would give each other these looks, trying to figure each other out...trying to figure out if the other was serious.

I was an extremist. I was always going full steam ahead with my ideas without the knowledge of how to get to where I wanted to go. Subsequently, she witnessed a lot of hamster-wheeling. I had huge dreams and was hell bent on being impressive. I wanted to be that guy that people could see and want to be like, but never get close enough to touch. We all know that person. He or she may show you a little attention, but then back off to keep themselves untouchable. I was in a band. I dressed cool...sometimes, danced cool....once in a while, and sang cool......as long as Limp Biscuit was cool. I would do this one dance where I would gyrate my hips in such a way, the audience would actually move their heads back, afraid I would hit them. She would sit on the side as proud as ever, silently making notes for when she would be able to mock me ten years later on the couch with some wine. Then we could laugh about it, but not now. In these moments I danced like a Pentecostal holy roller making love to everything in the air. I would just close my eyes and allow the devil's angels to laugh at me as I swayed.

She was a voyeur. She is smarter than the average person. She will put in her headphones and not turn on the music so you wouldn't bother her, but she could hear what you are saying to your husband over the phone and you wouldn't know. You would say, "Laura" and nothing. Then you would wave and she would take off the headphones and answer. She heard you the whole time. Imagine how many times she made me look stupid with this practice.

She worked at a golf course as the beer girl, which bothered me a little because golfers are generally jerks that ogle women like this. She was practical. Everything I wasn't. She was pragmatic. She did things that made sense because they made the most sense. She didn't want to test danger because that was stupid. She wasn't hard to please and wasn't extravagant. A person didn't need to be anything special to catch her attention.

Even a tattooed guy from the other side of town could catch her attention.

We had a date. We were both expecting something different I think. She was probably expecting the typical guy in his early 20's that would probably end up being a jerk that she never spoke with again. I was expecting the typical pretty but shallow girl I was used to. We both got something different. I immediately noticed how easy it was to be around her. It wasn't awkward at all. It wasn't hard to talk to her. She was down to earth and funny and full of stories. I took her to a cider mill, then an old train yard that I would frequently go to and speak with the homeless in. I walked her up the hill to the train cars. I'm not sure what I was trying to prove, I just think I was trying to let her know who I was at the start, so if she wanted to run, it was because she didn't like who I really was at the start.

I dropped her off at her car and walked back to mine. I wanted to kiss her. Every time I saw her I wanted to kiss her. But I didn't. I didn't want to connect that way. There was something different about her. I would tell my pastor almost a decade later that I knew she was sent for me. He would question how I could know and I still can not produce an answer because I truly cannot hear God with perfect accuracy. But that night, I went home and wrote down in my journal that I met a girl. I went out with a girl on a date and I would marry her. I cannot be certain of the voice of God, but I can be certain that she was the one girl that confused me and turned me upside down. She was to be my wife.

She remains my beautiful wife. She is still so different from me. She still messes up the words of every song and every name. She still looks at me and pulls her head back, trying not to be hit by the dancing of this clown. She is graceful and soft: She is a balance to everything I am. One day one of us will bury the other. She will either get my name wrong on the headstone or I will say something embarrassing at her funeral. Either way, we will be together. We will be the same. We will be different.





Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Between Where Faith Begins...And We End.

I don't write a lot about the years growing into a man. My thoughts here usually start when I was able to decipher what everything meant in the world...or at least as I thought they meant. What I thought the world was and what it actually is profoundly defies my entire youth. I didn't understand so much of the gold I held as I do now. Kids wake and they worry about things that will not matter to them in ten years, then redirect their attention to whatever is in front of them. I had bad things happen. I had sorrow introduced early, but I didn't understand what it was even about. I only understood the things I could hold.

In real life the things you can hold sometimes go away and you can no longer reach them. Many try to keep stretching, but they will always be just out of reach. Always something you always wanted to be or to do.

Some things are meant to happen one time for all eternity and no more. These moments when the moon was bright and the the person next to you understood you perfectly for that moment only and never again. These are the moments you won't forget because they define your childhood...and your adulthood.

I had a gang called the brat patrol that consisted of my little brother, but not blood yet, Andy. We made the blood ritual official the summer of 1988, when we pressed our bloody fingers together and swore a life long pledge that neither of us was ever willing to defy. We were famous in the 7 blocks that surrounded us. We were the savages because we pinned a kid under the ball pit at Chucky Cheese's for 10 minutes as his mother looked for him. It was his birthday. We were the gang that had Cub-scout knives and threatened to kill kid's mothers. I sat in a wooden club house with two guards at the side and two guards at the door, just waiting for a rival gang to attack and meet their doom.

My mom ran a day care, so during nap time, we would have fight clubs to see which 4 year old was the toughest to move on to defending the honor of God Himself. At least we told them.

Really, we wanted power over something...I did. In honesty, I wanted power over something. I wanted to be something great. I would never settle to be ordinary. If I was considered ordinary, I would break a kid's arm to get notoriety. And I did.

Meanwhile, I would lay in the living room at home on the floor next to the heat register, listening to the sounds a furnace makes when it begins to go to work. It reminded me of how I would eventually go to work.

I would set an alarm and when it rang I would hit the snooze once before rising. I would stagger to the coffee pot, trying not to wake anyone. I would brew the coffee and brush my teeth. I would drive to work with a sadness and dread that anyone would feel at 2:45 AM on a Tuesday.

This is how I remember it feeling as I waited for the the relief of that heat to hit me. I had listened to the preparation and needed the reward. The heat would rush through those little horizontal cuts in the baseboards that I would count with my fingers so many times. Eventually, the comfort would cease as the heat turned off and the loneliness returned.

The heat always seemed to turn off, despite it's promises.

When the tinkering subsides, you will always be listening to the machines shutting down. This is where real faith begins.

Sing. Migrate. Thanks for reading...Z

As You Pass Through

Can you measure the life of a man when he dies? Can you define a man by what he leaves behind?

Some people just always leave a mess. I am guilty. My wife says I leave whatever I am doing at my feet. I can't argue. The measure of what I am doing has always been more important to me than than the mess it leaves behind. This may be my eternal flaw; that I never measured the weight of the mess I have left, but there is so much more to the heart than the evidence of it's life. As a people, we demand greatness so we judge very harshly what acceptable means to us. Each of our definitions are different. Some demand wealth and fame. Some demand notoriety. I demand sincerity.

I have hundreds of faults. Many so visible that one may define me to someone else. I have failed at so much in my life and struggle to be the person that I am supposed to be. But the one thing I do not believe I have lacked is sincerity. I go heart first into everything I desire. No one will say that I was fake. They will call me an idiot. They will call me inadequate. They will call me a waste of talent. They will call me a disappointment. Maybe only I will call me these things, but they will not call me insincere.

I think the measure of my life will be made by what is behind my actions sometimes. I believe that our success means a lot, but it doesn't mean everything. I may not be written about or spoken about as being talented or wise or accomplished. But if you ask my son or my daughter, I believe you will hear stories of me flipping them all around and laughing with them. I think if you asked my wife, you would find a woman that is full. This is the measure of a man. I think that life is really found in those trivial moments that most would call "wasting time." The moment you close your mother's eyes after she has died. The moment you have put your daughter's hand into the hand of her future husband. The moment you thank the guests who have come to your wife's funeral. The moment you hold your grandchildren above your head and look right into your past and remember how beautiful life can be and how wonderful it is to experience this beauty for the first time. The measure of a man is found in these little moments that fill everyone around you.

When you are a kid, you always want better for your life than you will eventually accomplish. The man at the end of the parade looks gravely different from the child at the start. It isn't due to failure. It's due to life. It's due to intervention. It's due to the effect of cause. We are who we end up. But that isn't all we are.

Life is not about accomplishments. Life is about the people you touch along the way.



Sing.
Migrate.




 Thanks for reading...Z

Forgetting Who We Are

When we lose ourselves in what is going on around us, we give everything over to whoever wants to trample on us. We might as well have forgotten our own names. We become everyone around us and not a single bit of who we actually are. We forget ourselves as easily as we forget our dreams.

New Years celebration is about starting something new. I am new. I become new everyday. There is still old in me and some of the old rots in me like a corpse, but the new overcomes. My hope is that I can always be new. I want to progress. If I am the same next year as I was this year, I have failed and my faith is weak. I don't want to forget myself. The person I am is based in passion and zeal. I don't want to become one of "Them."

"Them" is a breed of people that have, over time, forgotten that everything around us is spoiling. They forgot that life is in Christ and not in whatever our culture pimps as happiness. American culture is the whore that threatens to rape us of our souls. Faith. Strength. Compassion. Sacrifice. Look at a soldier and tell him of the American way of life after he has spent three Christmases in Afghanistan dodging car bombs. We consume and worry about what doesn't matter. Life is more than what you can purchase. Life is lived in the moments of silence.

Today while trying to teach my kids what a harmony is in music, I played a song I used to teach Will harmonies several years ago. It was a bad time of year to be playing that song, but the harmonies are perfect in it. I had spent hours in the garage with Will teaching him how to sing a harmony using this song. I played it tonight and was back in that garage again. It was a sudden and unexpected flood of emotion. I held it back as always, but it made itself tonight for me.

That night when I was confident that Will had learned how to do a harmony as a bass player, we wrote a song called "Toilet Paper Rockets." The original lyrics are buried with him, but the concept was that you can travel back into time, but you can never get back who you were. Bad or good. We played this song only once and Will got scared and failed to do the harmonies. His heart was in the way he looked at me across the stage when he had failed.

Failure is about learning. When we fail, we learn how not to fail. We move on keeping who we are and are stronger. When we give up, we lose ourselves and wander into the abyss that has become humanity.










Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Lightyears

And the tears broke through when there was no one there to sweep them up. Above the rafters a beam of light that made it's way 2000 light years from the hallway of Heaven, pinched it's way through the crack in the plywood and into every dark place that existed. What was hardened was smashed into tiny colorful shards of glass that reflected the light perfectly for anyone who would open their eyes to see. All of the sudden, the broken reached their feet again to find warmth more soothing than the sun. They lifted their faces to the heavens to see what was above. They found nothing but light so bright it burned their eyes to keep reaching. Some gave up and closed their eyes, refusing to see beyond the other side of it. Yet others closed their eyes, but could not stop themselves from trying to find the source of the warmth that lit up their entire lives. For those that kept searching, their anguish was overshadowed by the colors and beauty that seemed to reach them every time they were about to give up, seeming to remind them that this desperation was of God and hope was on the other side. For those who gave in and slept, hope kept knocking...and knocking.






Sing.
Migrate.


Thanks for reading...Z

You Will Want to Stop...Don't

I've been running a lot for the past 6 months. I think I can't stay away from the feeling of balance and gratitude I get when I have to fight, and win.

Today it was raining freezing water onto the earth by my house. I got home from work dreading the feeling of ice cold water dripping down the middle of my back, paralyzing me with that awful bone chill. I put on my shoes and my gamer wife strapped on hers too, even when she was sick today. We set off for 5 miles in this mess. During my first quarter mile I stepped in my first huge puddle and filled my shoes with cold gelatinous fluid hell bent on wrapping it's tentacles around each individual toe and strangling it to death. I then repeated the puddle incident over and over for the next 48 minutes. When I got home, I got in the shower filled with endorphins from my victory over the elements and my own personal discomfort. As I was feeling the stabbing pain of my sensation coming back into my toes as the hot water thawed them, I had a thought. Very rare thought. It is when the conditions are uncomfortable that you really learn to fight. When you are wanting out and fight to the death you build perseverance. This is mental training. These are the times that you really get the good stuff. You may hate it at the time, but when it's over and you are still standing, you realize that there isn't much that can stop you. Philippians 4:13 becomes a real reality as you have just caught a glimpse of beating your body into submission.

The wise runner will lace them up in 6 inches of snow, icy sidewalks and trails, freezing rain, staggering wind, the dead of night, the mist of the morning, in anger and sadness, when ill, when exhausted from a horrendous day at work, when your legs hurt, and especially when you want to give up. These are the very moments that train you to push on both to the next mile and in your life.

Then I had another rare thought. This isn't just about running. Paul wrote about beating your body into submission as a runner does to train for a race, and uses it as a metaphor for pressing on in your faith. Life gets really hard. Many times, you are gonna want to give up, don't. Keep moving forward. In these hard times, make it a point to face the discomfort head on with tenacity. If you usually run 4, run five when it really hurts. When you sin, don't live in your guilt. Get up, realize your folly, confess it, put it away, and move forward. It's gonna be uncomfortable and the pain in your spine is parylizing, but remember that these moments are golden. This is where you build perseverance. This perseverance builds true wisdom.

Sing.
Migrate.


Thanks for reading...Z

36

Four years today since I last saw him; His birthday. He turned 32 on that day.


Happy birthday where you are now my big brother.


Sometimes you don't have anything nice to say, but you can't just NOT say anything at all. Sometimes things need to be recognized despite the sadness they bring. Sometimes when speech defeats us and we shiver out the inner most chambers of our memories, it is best to look up. There aren't many good feelings in me today. I've been pretty foul from the moment I awoke. It really gets frustrating trying to sort out the mixture of joy and grief during the holidays, and especially his birthday. So I'm not going to write anything sad or negative today. I'm not going to show you what's inside because what's in there isn't productive right now. What's inside will pass in a few days and I will resume the clown I have always been.

So instead of pouring out. I'll tell you a story about my brother, whom really isn't my brother.


We met in church. We would go every Wednesday, Monday, and Sunday. Wednesdays were the family classes, and for some reason the kids in the Starter jackets always stood out to each other. We would glance at each other in a moment of respect and do the "cool guy" nod. I had my Tarheels coat, Will had the Bulls coat, and Joe, always the outlandish one, had the Triple Fat Goose with a metal plated Raiders cap.  After a few weeks of "cool guy" nods, they told me to sit with them during church after Sunday School. I was down for that. My only other option was sitting up front with the youth group kids who had a leader that had this head that look like an actual penis. He used to always shush me. I don't do well with being shushed, especially by phallic heads.

I sat down between Joe and Will next to their parents, who would become another set of my parents. I talked through the entire service. I talk when I'm nervous. Will's mom was horrified at me I think as she kept having to tell me to be quiet. Joe pulled out an old Atari handheld game and that shut me up for a little while. After church, despite the frustration Will's mom must have felt with my loud and obnoxious tone during Jesus time, she invited me, my brother, and my mother out for Chinese food.

Did I mention that I was the pickiest eater as a boy? I ate McDonalds, cereal, PB&J, bologna with mayo, and pizza. That was all I would eat. What even is Chinese food? Cats? So I get to the restaurant and listened to all of the exotic entrees being ordered that sounded like noises my furnace makes in the night and tried to decide between eating cat or eating walrus. I chose a cheeseburger with fries (because none of my other options were on the menu). The whole group, including my own mother scowled at me and shook their heads. Who orders that there? We ate, I did a lot more talking, and I had a new place to sit on Sunday mornings. I eventually joined them at their high school and we became family. My heart melted into their home and I became a staple at dinner. I even learned to like Chinese. Will's mother treated me as her child, even yelled at me like them, which I think I appreciated most. Their father bailed me out of my folly as a real father would. No one questioned my presence or tried to push me out. Their home was the warm guts that people paint Christmas portraits of.


They saved my life. Will saved my life. Happy birthday. I will always look up to you.




Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

The DNA of Snowflakes

Little crystals reflected the lights from the houses that lined the partially shoveled sidewalk that continued to add to it's girth. The moon is partially hidden behind the clouds, but bright enough to announce it's presence to anyone who asks. A drunk guy staggers and wades through the drifting snow across the street. He speaks to himself with unintelligible words, acknowledging your presence with the turn of his head, but continues in his solitary conversation about a woman and her dog. He misses them both, he says as he looks at me. It is really late, probably 3:30 AM, I can't tell anymore. I had been laying in the snow for so long staring into the night sky that I forgot to remember to check my watch. It wasn't cold outside really. It was just snowing. The snow was a welcomed occurrence to me and was the very attraction that lured me outside in the first place.

Snow is real. You can touch snow. It travels a long way to get to you, all along experiencing a complete transformation from the liquid to this beautiful crystal ornament that lands and rests on my cheek. It is in this moment that the beauty of God touches my face that I remember what life is about. I remember what Christmas is about.

A beautiful God came and fell onto my face in the cold. A completely unique and perfectly shaped crystal landed on my face...on your face, and gave the promise to fix everything. A messenger from the only One who knows our hearts and has the strength to give us something to hope for falls right on my face and melts into my flesh.

I had been in mourning for so long that I forgot what the morning sun looked like. It was dark all around and the moon lit only enough for me to see the pavement below me. Every Christmas I would walk forwards to my place of prayer and anguish, then walk backwards back home. This was grief. This was the mess that is left when death passes through your life. You forget even the most fundamental truths about strength, life, God, and your very own spirit and begin to wander. In grief there is no way to go but all over the place. It lasts however long God allows it to, to help you gain from it. For me, every Christmas was a reminder that I lost something I could never replace and I would never be the same. Then the snowflake; A perfect reminder that I am not alone under that moon. The finger of God touches my face and I remember what I had forgotten. Christmas is about the finger of God touching the world, giving hope to a wandering people.

This Christmas will be sad at times just like the rest of them, but the holiday will be about Jesus, not Will. Whoever you are mourning wants to be let go of. This holiday does not have to be about who isn't here with you now. It should about who is here with you now.







Sing.
Migrate.



Thanks for reading...Z

Faith

Here's to another birthday.

But it isn't just another birthday is it? It's the day we celebrate our Savior.

I used to sit in church and hear that and just think, "Ok, Jesus was born...cool, I was born before too." It never occurred to me that it would mean so much to me later. Church is church. People will sing and sermons will be preached and skits will be performed. The church will have fundraisers and outreach events and people will show up and experience the celebration of the birth of our Lord Jesus. It was always a ceremony to me until December 25th 2009 when my brother was put into a truck and driven away lifeless.

This was the day that all of that church stuff went away and stopped doing anything for me. I was suddenly lost, confused, and conflicted. My confusion quickly became anger, then rage, and became the very thing that carried me through each day. I was comforted by nothing. My nights were spent turning and my days spent in anxiety. I was hiding from everything. I would not pray, and I would not give this God a moment of my time. To be honest, I gave him the finger.

I was wrong and underprepared for what was going to become of my understanding of my faith. My faith would no longer be based on weekly meetings, spiritual awakenings, or random gatherings of other believers. My faith would become the only way to survive. I would spend a good amount of time going through various motions so everyone thought I was OK. But I wasn't OK at all. I was traveling at an unmanageable pace toward what would become the darkest place I have been since my head laid on a certain set of tracks.

This is the danger of unrealistic faith. I say this because I believe God can do anything, but I now believe He won't do everything. God does not always do what you want. God isn't always going to save your mother, or wife, or brother. God sometimes, is going to watch them die with you. He is going to weep with you without you noticing. He is going to silently agree with the pain and anguish you face with the rising of every sun.

This pissed me off for a long time. It kept me from Him until I realized my faith wasn't about religious milestones or feelings at all. It is about survival. God isn't this cheesy pie in the sky moment when you all of the sudden feel better about yourself and life. God is getting a phone call while your son is opening his Wii by your brother to tell you your other brother is dead by sadness. God is in the moments trying to figure out a single thing to say to this amazing mother, who is always concerned with how you are doing, when her son is gone from her. God is when you are denouncing everything you had believed and turning to the cold darkness of anger. He lives there with you sometimes. This is faith. You come out of it and realize that He was there too. You realized just how broken His heart is too.

Then you understand what it means to be a Christian. It means pain, poverty, anger, rage, sadness, rejection, heartache, and despair are the very things that make your faith real to you.





Sing.
Migrate.




Thanks for reading...Z

The Prayers in my Sweat

What do you do to overcome your weaknesses?

In my case, my weaknesses overcome my strengths, although my strengths may overcome another's strengths. In my case, I learn to fight. I search inside of myself and find anger and release, then repeat. It is amazing the way anger manages to hold on to you like it is trying to survive a fall from a cliff. Happiness is easily forgotten. Blessings are easily forgotten. Accomplishments are easily forgotten. Anger stays for the long haul. Why?

So I run it out. I have explored in my life many more unhealthy ways of alleviating the ache in my heart, but running was the first to be productive. I need to believe I am stronger than the things I cannot control. God has always assured that with Him I am, but the utter humanity in us desires to see it with experience.

So I ran once. Then I ran again, and again, and again, and again, and again. I ran until I felt better and my fists were no longer clinched. I ran until I was too exhausted to display anger in my life. I ran until my chest expanded and air filled my lungs in their entirety. I experienced what God promised me. I could do anything with Him. He gives me strength. I run because I have to purge and scream and hate and fire and break down. Then I breathe and thank God for the strength to overcome my flesh and release to Him my fear and anger. See, I see running as a form of prayer. For some, our words alone are our prayers. For others, our tears alone. For me, my words are only a small part of the communication I need. I need to feel it. I need to feel the exhaustion that requires God to hold me up. My sweat is prayer.

When God says to give Him your troubles, this is the only way I have been able to interpret that in a way I can understand. I give it to Him though my suffering and ability to prevail.






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 Thanks for reading...Z

Changing Lanes

There is this one day that you are driving in this one direction. You are completely sure you are headed in the right direction to your destination, despite that little voice inside that tells you "No!" Your eyes are basically closed, blocking out the lines in the road that pass beneath your tires in rhythmic form. They play a song that reminds you of your childhood, laying in the back seat on your way home from a meaningless Bible school.

You wake up. You didn't know you were sleeping. You instinctively turn your car around because despite your evidence, this is not the right direction. This path is easy and the road is clear.

Your path is full of bumps and pot holes that threaten to take off your tires. You know that if the road is clear, you're going the wrong way. The Bible says: For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God (1 Cor. 1:18). 

The road to real life in Christ will be filled with pot holes and flat tires. This has always been the way of God. If it seems like something everything wants to believe, it's probably not God. 








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Thanks for reading...Z

Dreams

A child cries and dreams about nothing. It doesn't even know the reason it cries. A person is different from the next. Some babies cry for different reasons. But still, there isn't a living thing that does not cry. Crying is prayer. If no speech is available, the Spirit of God cries and prays for us. This is God.

But who are we? We are a people that is far from anything resembling God. We are a people that are crying for what we believe is right and just. We base this off of the 35 minutes we spent feeding the homeless or praying for the poor. The rest of the time, the homeless remain exactly what they are...homeless.

What does this mean? I don't know. Should we give? I don't know. But what I do know is that they should never be ignored.

Today I was running in Detroit with a friend.  We were expecting the worst as we sweated through Cass Corridor to downtown Detroit. Instead, we got normal people, who thew up a fists as we ran, symbolizing their approval. We had community. One guy even ran with us for 10 seconds.

People need love above all things. We need to give love above all things. It's a perfect match.




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 Thanks for reading...Z

I miss you like crazy, but I can't mourn you forever. I will always miss you and be sad, but I cannot be shut down. You are permanently gone from my physical life, but there is so much that isn't. I'm going to go to them.









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Migrate.




 Thanks for reading...Z

Hiding in the Garden of Eden

The same David that slayed the Great Goliath, is the same David that murdered a man over the lust for his wife. This great man, who won the respect and admiration of an entire nation, found a way to corrupt himself and fall into the dark pit of sin. David was a real person. It's hard to see the person inside of these huge Bible stories, but in David's case, it's not so hard. He made human mistakes that granted him very human consequences. The point is; How did He get from one to the other: hero to villain. There is a saying that, "Every hero, within a given amount of time will become the villain." I hate that this is mostly true, but the humanity is consistent. People mess up because we are people, no matter what title we achieve. The Pope is still some guy and the person that takes your order is still some guy...no difference. People are people that make equal mistakes.

In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were naked, really could be seen also as a metaphor for purity and innocence. Adam and Eve mess up for the first time in all of history and the world changes instantly. Adam begins to panic and run. They hide from God. They cover themselves, which only covers their innocence. From there, God makes it more difficult to obey Him. God curses disobedience. God is perfect and cannot live in imperfection.

So God sends Jesus, the Messiah. The Savior of our sin and imperfection. He dies and raises again with our disobedience all over Himself.

Now we still sin. God still requires perfection. Jesus paid for our sin. We are perfect. We stand before God in perfection.

Why is it then, that we continue to look for fig leaves when we sin? We run and try to hide, pretending to ourselves that we are invisible from our Maker. We think as if we are in that garden, hiding from a walking God. We are in the world. hiding from an ever present God. He has always seen and been present in everything. We cannot hide. Hiding leads to more sin and mistakes. Coming clean leads back to life.








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 Thanks for reading...Z

Mirrors

"When I interviewed Duritz in 2012, he was nice and engaging and definitely a little tortured. He had recently been taken off "about seven medications," he said, which sent him into a tailspin of withdrawal that lasted eight months. "It's a very raw world right now," he told me, "because I've been coated in gauze and amber for the last decade or so and I am running around naked right now. It's like the difference between being deaf and everyone in the world talking to you at once. You can't understand what the fuck anyone is saying either way, but it's probably better to be here than not be here. But it's very loud right now. It's like an assault in a lot of ways."

This was from and interview with Adam Duritz from my favorite Counting Crows. I think that people with mood disorders have a profound ability to perceive the world as it really is sometimes and not what they want it to be. The truth ins't always convenient. 

We just wanted to touch something that was forbidden to be touched. We wanted to be different from those that feared so much. In all of the time that has passed on this earth, less than 10% of the people who have lived here and worked hard here for their families have been remembered past a couple of generations. A guy will get up at 5 Am and get himself ready for sweat and grease and that longing for lunchtime. He will do this every day for 70 years, then retire to a life of walking to the store for the day's items that replace yesterday's uses. He'll grow older and die with a hundred people mourning his day to day. It will go on in people's minds for a while then smolder and fade into old campfire ashes. All he wanted was to be remembered, but the grass grows long around his headstone. This is the real fear of death. Actually dying is uneventful most times. I'v witnessed many deaths. Some of them never even have  family to show up at all. Some people have erased the love a family used to give them. The lights on the tree. The freshly cut grass. The cracks in their skin. The weariness in their eyes when they would tuck you in at night. All forgotten. No one wants their weariness to be forgotten.

This is the saddest fact of life and death. This is what many people fear about it so much. One day, no one will remember a single thing about you or what you did here.

Your world is gone. 

It's now being inhabited by people you don't recognize or understand. It isn't easy anymore. Life is more complex and even your children blame you for things you had no idea were harmful to them. 

The point of life for me????? Just be that person your children are proud of. To not cause trauma to them and teach them what is right and wrong. To teach them that life is full of horrific things and people have the tenancy to abandon reasoning, but God is real and alive and standing next to their dead father that they were so proud of. There is no better a solution to the fear of death for me.




Sing.
Migrate.

Oblivion

When something dies, it's body begins to shut down, starting from the least important organs to the most. Our anatomy is really intelligent and reactive to our physical and emotional situation. Eventually, without a cure, the body will begin to let go of it's most important organs...until the heart succumbs and the rhythm of that soul has ceased. Everything that person has experienced has become an archive. Very few will remember him and even less as the years add to their numbers. 1% of the earth's total population will be remembered by the future. 99% will go off into oblivion without a soul eventually remembering their existence.

This is why artists paint and writers write. This is why people are fighting day to day. We are fighting oblivion. We want to be remembered when we leave what we call life.

99% will fail.

My kids will love me forever. My grandkids will talk about me to their wives and children. My great grandchildren will see me as a Bible story that shouldn't be trusted because it was told by someone who knew me. The rest will never know my name. This is part of the curse...the worst part of the curse. Sin has made people eternally forgettable.

...

But the beauty. The beauty of life is remarkable. We are born and learn things through trial and error. We learn what life is through pain and laughter and hatred and perceived love. We make mistakes and correct them. We live the best way we know how and pray that God will correct our mistakes. We regret things until we die. We look at the way our sons treat their wives and are so proud, as if they did all of the work of being a good man. All the while, we know and dread the day we will be laying, hands folded in those cedar boxes below the most beloved people...the only people that will mourn or remember our lives. If we could see their eyes, I believe we would know that it was all worth it.

Then we would see the way our great grandchildren treated their wives and children. We would smile because the world is evil, but your wisdom went on for generations. We would see the things that history would not tell you directly in a book. They will see the point of life. They would know all about the need to fight through all obstacles and provide for our families. They would know about what true love has to fight through to remain...true.












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Migrate.


Thanks for reading...Z

The Dead End Kids - A short story

We climbed into the 1990 Ford Econoline conversion van. It was the dead of winter. The part of February that everything seems sterile. The snow isn't new, it's grey and packed deep into everything surrounding the paths shoveled out twice a week. The air itself smells of salt and stale cold water.

When December comes, 30 years later, you will sit outside and catch the snowflakes on your tongue and cry thinking of doing that same action 30 years earlier as a boy. You remember the way your scarf would bother you as it collected your breath and rubbed your spit across your face. You remember the snowballs and the tears mixed with snow dripping down your red face.

It's not December 30 years later. Today the snowflakes just fall onto deaf eyes. In the van are my brothers. Kids that would never make it out of this place, just like you. There were kids that went away to college and became all of these glamorous people with glamorous things. They had cabins "Up North" and came home from work everyday without cuts and scrapes across their hands and arms. We were the kids that buried their hands in the snow to take hold of two by fours to carry up a ladder to the roof of the new construction would-be homes.

We were the ones that would never make it out, not because we didn't have the skills, but because we didn't want to. We loved this place. We loved the familiarity of every street we drove down. We loved going from place to place and rebuilding and exaggerating all of our memories.. We would get into that van and drive for hours, smoking cigarette after cigarette, making fun of each other.

This night, we would put on ski masks and go to the liquor store and just buy some coffee. We would get out of the van and rush into the store and tell people to move as we passed them and grab some beef jerky, potato chips, and machine mixed coffee from the thing by the coolers. We would approach the cashier with the masks on and look him no where but the eyes and set down our prospected goods. He would pause and stare us down. We would keep our hands on the counter and stare directly into his eyes, waiting for him to react. He did first as he reached down to the shelf under the counter and showed us the handle of a handgun. We didn't look away from his eyes, or pretended not to. I slid the money over to him. He dropped the gun back down and grabbed the money and put it in the register. He took out our change and dropped it on the counter in front of us. We didn't break gaze with him until we turned together and walked, leaving the change on the counter.

We get back into the van and laugh. We go home and build rockets out of cardboard toilet paper centers and fill their guts with rocket engines and tissue. We mold them into the very vessels we wanted to leave this earth in someday and go outside to fly them.

3 AM in the morning is when the first was launched in the middle of the suburban street. It soured into the winter night sky as if it had no intention of coming back down. We lost it when it burned out and found the end of our atmosphere. Engineering was my oldest brother's strongest gift. The second onto the roof of the neighbor's house. The third would be found in the park across the street.

We laid down on the snow packed grass and spoke about getting into those rockets and flying away one day. We watched planes scratch the sky above us, wondering where they were going and what kinds of people were on them. Maybe we would want to go somewhere someday. This night has been sitting in my memories for years and years. This was a picture of the only thing that made me happy as a teenager.

***


Many years later I would return to this house. One brother gone in his rocket, and the other somewhere between grief and loneliness. The house is boarded up and the the windows broken. I climb in to see the place I used to sleep next to my brothers. It's February again, the dead of winter. The street is now a dead end as the new freeway has been built at the end of it. There stands 4 houses on each side, 5 of them covered in boards.

I see my bed, still unmade and full of ashes and dust. I uncover a spot to sit down and look at the ceiling I spent so many hours looking at before life became fast. There is a feeling of emptiness there, yet I still see the memories of my life here. The wallpaper is cracked and peeling, but I still see them as they were when we were kids and everything was as it should be.

I look over to my pillow that still lays at the foot of my older brother's bed below and smile. I pick it up to smell the distant scent of my youth. I look down and see something that I cannot explain. I see a rocket. A pristine rocket lying under where my pillow was. I picked it up and examined it. It was the same rocket my oldest brother had climbed and left us behind in. I pulled out the burnt rocket from the inside of the toilet paper tubing and smelled it. I still had a faint smell of burnt sulfur to it that brought me instantly to another place. I began pulling out the tissue packing used to balance the rocket and give it weight. As I did, I found a piece of paper crumbled up. I knew I had found what I was looking for. I opened the paper up and read the words "The World Never Changes For The Dead End Kids."

The tears ran on and on until I got up and put the note back inside the rocket and put them both back under my pillow and left the house. As I walked away, I looked to the broken cement of the driveway and pictured that van and my brothers waiting for me to join them. I smiled and looked to my right to see the dead end sign that reflected the night.

I got back into my car and went home.









Sing.
Migrate.





 Thanks for reading...Z