Until I Wasn't

I've been writing some different things lately.  This one has been kicking around in my head the last few days so I decided to go ahead and get it out of there.  I'm also going to pop up a short story I wrote for a contest with The Rusty Quill.   I missed the deadline for the contest, but wanted to finish the story and get it out there.  I'll be doing more these type posts now.  They scratch a certain creative itch that I want to be able to soothe.  Enjoy...or don't lol all up to you.

I was a child, full of wonder, believing in magic.  

Until I wasn’t, Santa disappeared, the wardrobe just held musty coats, and teeth stopped being currency…

I was a Teenager, with angst and adrenaline.  

Until I wasn’t, first cars, first kisses, long weekends and endless summers evaporated into the false freedom of new milestones reserved for being “grown.”

I was 18 and 19 and 20. Living life by rules of my own making,  

Until I wasn’t, concerts, late night study sessions, living states away with no real responsibilities morphed into Jobs, and houses, and cars and pets, a spouse, and kids…and…and….and.

I was a Son, struggling to understand parents who didn’t understand me.  

Until I wasn’t. And the roles reversed and it was my turn to put up guide rails, to worry that they were eating, or taking their pills or being gentle to each other.  Until it was time to move them into a safe space, until their minds and memories were stollen and it was time to remember them with a crowd of their friends and family.

I was a solid husband, remembering all the things and wanting nothing more than to see her smile and laugh and feel safe.

Until I wasn’t and I spiraled into a place that was dark and full of monsters that tugged me toward the darkness.

I was a Good Dad.  Taking care of my girls, playing with them, watching them grow and change, wanting to make it all better all the time.  

Until I wasn’t and I fell apart, almost drowning because I couldn’t see any way out of the mess that life became.  

I was a Pastor, leading people, teaching, studying reaching to people who just needed to be loved on.  Pushing my church to realize it was better to be a Christ Follower than a christian, 

Until I wasn’t, and I fell, losing the thing that defined me for decades, walling myself away from a community that I once embraced.

I was a friend with friends.  Willing to do the work that true friendship takes.   

Until I wasn’t and I turned in on myself, making excuses for not being what I knew how to be.

Until I was’t, and then I was, not because of me, but because people chose to see more than what I wasn’t.

Slow Ride...Take it Easy...

There are things that will always remind me of my parents, specific things that remind me of them individually.  It’s no secret that my parents and I had our ups and downs.  Truth is most people, if they were honest, would have to say the same thing.  I wrote about my dads blue Nova a few weeks ago, and I have been working on what I want to say about my mom.  Searching for the same types of connections.  

To say my mother was a force would be an understatement.  What happens when a force that is used to getting it’s way, runs into a force unwilling to just go along?  Lot’s of conflict.  I think that would be one of the key words to explain our relationship.  My mom had a lot of CJ in her.  This unmoving belief that things were to be their way.  That the world was right when it was spinning on the axis of their own creation.  As you can imagine this did not always mean mother and daughter were on the best of terms.  Still there was a lot of love between them. 

To be honest I didn’t have time for it, there were a lot of times that things would have been easier around the house if I could have had the same attitude as my dad.  The one that just said okay or just went along but that was not how things were.  I took every chance I had to get out of the house.  To go places.  Every time there was some camp or some youth convention or school thing that could take me away I would jump at the chance.  Of course the older I got the easier this became.  

The year I worked at camp for the first time, was my first substantial break from the conflict that seemed to be moving faster and faster to a head.  The thing is my mom had plans for the people in her life.  She had things worked out in her head the way they should go.  Don’t get me wrong most parents have a direction they would like to see their kids take.  As a parent there is always that desire to see your kid do something more.  The difference is the majority of parents realize that their children come to a point in their life that they have to break away and make their own way.  Find their own plan, and then live into it.  

I think one of the most telling things for me has been watching my mom and her interactions with our oldest daughter.  See mom is a one person person.  She’s also a very greedy person… I think that’s a nicer way to say it.  Possessive is another way.   Things are hers, people are hers as well.  The problem is she could only really do one people at a time across the spectrum of relationships she had with people.  

There was “My Bonnie.”  “My Dennis.” “ My Aaron.” “My Pastor John.”  “My Friend’s Linda and Bill.”  See the pattern.  Each of those relationships are different and they are very small sets.  My Bonnie was moms best friend from nursing school, that friendship endured but fundamentally changed when my Dad came along.  My Dennis by necessity made the relationship with My Bonnie change, which is to be expected, the problem is everyone could see that except mom.  She never liked change.  So she now had a best friend and a husband.  The living arrangements would obviously change, except once they did mom was not happy about it, she wasn’t happy when “My Bonnie,” found other friends to fill in the space that was now taken up by my dad.  Speaking of which, once mom decided that she was cool with being with dad, that fundamentally changed the way he reacted to his parents.  The world revolved around my mom’s side of the family.  That’s just how it worked.  Holidays were always spent in Akron.  Other than Christmas Eve that was the one day reserved for my Dad’s family it was always Akron.  The thing my mom had the hardest time with was any kind of change in relationship.  That and any deviation from what she thought was best is not really supposed to be allowed.  Which brings me back to my oldest daughter.  When Amberly decided to join the Army my mom was decidedly not happy about it.  She made this clear.  My mom was all about calling recruiters or sergeants , or generals or whatever it had to be.  

This is the thing about my mom that was amazing, Her capacity to want others not just to do things her way, but to have things better than she did.  That she always thought that her way was best was less about thinking she was the smartest in the room and more a product of  her life.  Taking care of her siblings and her mother was something that she had to do.  Not just because they needed her to but because it gave her purpose.  She continued this taking care of even after it should have stopped.  This is evidenced in a conversation I had recently with my cousin.  My moms brothers both showed up at the same time to see her, they were in that cycle that members of the White family seem to always go through.  The one where they just stop talking for long stretches of time, and yet even in the facility she was in she had these two that had not spoken to each other for years, sitting with her in the same room, and they were all laughing and telling stories.  She had a good day that day, my cousin said she knew who people were.  

If you knew my mom and dad you know that they were doers.  They wanted to be the ones that took care of everyone and everything, especially my mom.  It’s hard to be a person that thinks they have to take care of everyone when you come to a point in life when you have to be taken care of.  There’s only two choices at that point.  You embrace the help that is offered, many times from the people that you have spent a lifetime helping, or close yourself off from the world, choosing instead to say you don’t need help.  My mom would regularly tell me, “We don’t ask for help, we are the ones that help.”  It was hard to see, and hard to try and explain on a regular basis that the people that were trying to help, that wanted to bring food, or drive them places or help clean or fill in the blank, were doing so because they finally had an opportunity to give back to this woman that taught Sunday school, and made food for people and, and, and.  

As I watched my mother continue to decline, the disease slowly robbing her of her sense and senses, I realized that some of the things that were pushing a wedge between us in the last few years likely had more to do with her mind betraying her and less to do with the stubbornness that was always a part of her and my relationship. 

I’ve heard it said that things like Dementia and Alzheimers turn off the filters that people have. The ones that make us suitable for public interaction.  You get the real person for a few days or weeks as the disease takes hold.  That is true of my mom.  It can be easy to stay camped out there, the frustrating and sad and I told you so.  But it’s in that space that grace has a chance to work, and when the diagnosis comes in that confirms the thoughts that were already there, it brings clarity to behaviors that previously were overwhelming.  It doesn’t change the overwhelming part, but it does explain a bit of what was behind what was going on.  

There are touch stones that happen in life and relationship.  Some are good touchstones and some are difficult to understand touchstones and some are just plain sad and tragic.  I have had all of those times with my parents in general and my mom in specific.  Two stand out in my memory just now.  One was a card that I received from my mom years and years ago.  The two of us were disagreeing heavily about what was happening, or what was going to happen.  I can’t pinpoint the year but I can see the card clearly the stamp on the envelope and that very distinct writing that at times I see slipping into my use of cursive and printing on those rare occasions that I do those things.  The card read simply; “Even when I’m mad at you I still love you.”  Sometimes I wonder if we both should have had a box of those cards that we could send back and forth to each other.  This was a good touchstone even if it does’t seem like it, it spoke of the fact that both of us were in different places, with different opinions and thoughts, and that not only were we not going to agree any time soon in fact it was likely we were not going to agree at all, yet there was still a desire for relationship and the knowledge that there was love there.  The second was a not so good one.  This one came from both sides said in conversation on the same day and several times throughout that particular month.  We both said it to each other a few times and it became a part of our relationship as time wound on and we both grew older.  “I love you but sometimes I don’t like you.”  I realized something, when I said it and when she said it.  This was one of the most honest real things we ever said to each other, and it actually was a good thing.  It happened later in life for both of us, in that time that two adults that happen to be related by blood find the disagreements are growing and the frustrations are amplified.  Her’s likely because I didn’t follow the plan she had ascribed to me and our relationship and mine because she just wouldn’t let it go and realize that I was not ever going to conform to her wishes.  Guess I come across my stubborn streak honestly.  

Here’s the thing.  My mom never wanted help but she always wanted to give it, even when she couldn’t, even when she was incapable of doing so.  That’s a frustrating thing when you’re looking in on her life, but it’s also something that made my mom my mom.  Given the opportunity to help another person she would do so, even if it meant that her health would suffer that she could be hurt or could be sick afterwards for weeks.  She knew what it was to give to other people, and loved doing it, even to the detriment of herself, may dad and her relationships with others.  This tenacity that said,  sure I can’t stand up and walk more than five paces without falling over because of vertigo but I will help paint a room, or weed garden beds, or plant flowers, or water flowers.  I’ll cook meals for others and bring deserts and make cookies for people, even though I won’t eat anything myself.  I’ll keep giving and giving and giving because that’s how it’s always been.  She used to say all the time.  “But Aaron, we don’t get help from people we give help to people.”  My mom really thought she was not supposed to need help, a tragic part of many people who claim christianity as their chosen belief system.  

One of my favorite memories of my mom comes from a time when her and my dad came down to visit when we lived in DC, well the DC metropolitan area.  We had Rockband hooked up to the big screen TV sitting in the living room, the OLD SCHOOL big screen.  We put her on drums and started “Slow Ride” by Foghat.  The concentration that can be seen on her face as she tries to keep beat on the easiest setting was fun and made all of us laugh.  

That’s who my mom was though.  Equal parts fun and frustrating, many times in the same 24 hour period.  That strange dichotomy of someone who wants the world to conform to their own way of thinking, while at the same time being fascinated by the creation around her and it’s many differences. 

And when on September 25 she finally got to take that trip of a lifetime that she constantly talked about and longed for it was sweetbitter, she finally got to be free of all the physical and mental pain and discomfort she had lived with for many years, got to walk through the gates and see the people that were waiting.  Bitter because well, she’s my mom and just like we used to say, even when we were mad at each other or frustrated with each other or failed to truly listen to what the other person was saying, even when we didn’t like each other we still loved each other, and finally bitter because, well if I’m honest, I’m jealous of her and my dad both for getting to hang out with one of the coolest little girls that ever graced this planet before we will.

The Blue Nova

 It’s interesting how when you’re younger it’s easy to forget the days when you were young.  For me it was that way.  In my 20’s and 30’s shoot even in my early 40’s I had vague recollections of what it was like being a kid as far as memories went.  I mean I knew stuff but when people would say things that they remembered from when they were 2 years old or they would talk about their earliest memory and could peg an age and everything.  Well that wasn’t me.  It still really isn’t me but lately as life has worn on and as the half a century mark is rolling ever closer I seem to be recalling more of the things that happened.  It likely has something to do with all the taking stock I’ve done in the last couple of years, and all the crappy stuff that has happened. 

Back in October my folks had to be put in the hospital and then into a facility.  This was necessary mainly because my mother refused all offers of help, and my dad, well he wanted to please mom, but when mom wasn’t around he wanted to please whomever he was talking to.  So when offered the opportunity for help without my mom he would say yes, but then when she was around he would say no.  

This isn’t a first.  It’s always been that way.  My dad would be okay with things, would understand the necessity of things, would agree with doctors, social workers, pastors, and his own son and family, all the way up until the point he was in the same space as my mom, then it would all flip.  This wasn’t relegated to recently either, it’s how I grew up.  This strange split personality that would emerge when around my mom.  The older I grew the more I noticed it and the more I realized that’s not what I wanted, I started to pull away a bit at a time just because I didn’t feel connected.  But lets get back to that blue Nova.  

My dad’s blue Nova was, I think, his last vestige of a space that was his.  He chose it, he loved that car, two doors, blue, vinyl interior,  when I was a kid I never realized fully the power that car hid, mainly because it was never really allowed to breathe.  Looking into it a bit further there were other options for the Nova, four door versions, smaller engines, even wagons and the like but dad always had the two door “muscle car” version.  I suspect one of the reasons he got to keep it as long as he did was because mom didn’t realize what was sitting in the garage.  

The thing is my parents had a somewhat parasitic relationship, where they both hosted each other.  They rarely had space from each other. When I say they did everything together, it’s not an understatement.  Sure there was space for some personal moments but by and large they fed off of each other.  For the most part my dad did whatever my mom wanted.  It’s interesting looking back, realizing that those times he would drive to the convenience store and get both of us a soda and a candy bar were his small rebellion, that the radio would turn to other stations those times he and I were going somewhere that she was not going to because of sleeping for work.  Little things to me, must have felt vindicating and somewhat rebellious to him.  Just like that Nova.  That car
features in one of my favorite memories with my father.  

There was one of those multi colored rugs on the back seat, we were still living on Elm Street and my dad decided to take his son to a little movie set in a galaxy far far away.  I remember climbing into the front seat because my mother wasn’t going.  She had a very strange relationships to movies in the theater.  I remember he standing on the porch and my dad backing down the driveway.  I remember the first time I saw the crawl, I remember begin hooked as soon as it was over, wanting to see it again and again, chomping at the bit for the next one and then the next.  Movies would always be a thorn in my moms side when they were in the theater, but when she was sleeping for work, there were times my dad would sneak away with me if there was something I wanted to see,  Star Wars, Star Trek, The Dark Crystal, Gremlins.  There were not many but they were there.  Tied to each of them though is that blue Nova, even though it was long gone before we went to see Empire.  Traded in on a four door sensible car.  That would be the remainder of his car buying life.  Wanting one thing but getting another.  From muscle car to a Reliant K, Plymouth Acclaim, and then a long line of Buicks.  Things had changed.  My mom even had a Horizon for a while that second family car that was little “just her size.”  I ended up with  the red one when I graduated and headed to college, taking it with me my sophomore year.  

My dad never did get another “fun” car.   He should have stopped driving before he did, and while I know he would sneak the car out on occasion, I also know that every time he did it was a terrifying experience for everyone when we found out.  The what if’s.  Same thing with my mom there at the tail end of their stint trying to say they didn’t need anyone’s help.  

There are times I long for the kind of memories and experiences that I see others have with their dads.  Concerts, and ball games, shared experiences that as you turn from youth to adult and then to real adult sees the relationship shift towards a friendship that maintains mutual respect, and well I didn't have that, but…  I cherish the thought of that Chevy Nova sitting in the garage.  My dad quietly knowing what was under the hood, what was possible and the chance I had to ride in it just him and me every once in a while. Grabbing a soda and a candy bar from the Sammy Quick Stop, Kansas, or Aerosmith, or Queen streaming from the radio that had been moved from the normal station to the one that he knew I liked, and that I think he secretly liked as well.

I miss you dad.  If you think of it grab Me Me and give her a big old hug and say it’s from me.

Update on my folks...

I thought I would write a bit of history and an update on my folks.  

My parents have always been rather independent.  Now I know that sounds kinda strange to say, and many times the joke of being hard headed is made when we talk about people that are really just very independently minded. The problem is with my parents it isn’t a joke.  Hard headed is the reality that they have lived in for a very long time.  

Several years ago I began to witness a gradual decline in both of them.  That decline began to become more pronounced when my father decided to retire.  I will never forget the day that they told me.  It was my day off in that former life that you can read about in other pages of the blog if you want, so that would make it a Thursday.  We were out on the front porch and my mom pulls into the driveway with my dad in the passenger seat.  Hmm that’s strange I thought.  But then figured that it must be that dad had a doctors appointment or something.  When they got out and climbed the stairs to the porch my dad announced that he had retired that morning.  I said oh really and my mom with this horrified look on her face said yes, yes he did.  He wrote his retirement letter last night and took it in today making it effective today.  No notice to the employer no conversation with mom or anyone.  He had this big grin, even told Zoey that the way you retire is just to go in and make it effective immediately.  We of course corrected that one. 

They were now with each other 24 7 and it started to take it’s toll. As I watched them going down hill we tried to help, and were told no.  They didn’t need help.  They were fine.  This is when things really started to tank.  

There was an accident that totaled their car, it was a miracle that she was not killed in that particular accident.   Things really began to go downhill after that.  We also started to have a bit more tension.  I would usually find out things from everyone but them health wise.  

Things continued to go south, and they continued to hide it, or think they were hiding it.  Dad began having more seizures mom’s vertigo got worse and worse.  She insisted on driving still and dad let her.  She had another accident and at that point I was not going to take them to look at cars and told others to not do it either.  There were fights about hospital stays. There were conversations with others, letting them know that I did not want them picked up from the hospital when my mother decided to check herself out.  This too caused a lot of tension.  

My mom and dad have always been the ones that have helped others, that’s been their way of living for a long time.   When it became evident that they needed more and more help they doubled down on being fine.  They were not eating properly.  Everything came to a head last October when my dad had 5 seizures in a very short period of time.  They tried to say no to the paramedics.  As bad as it sounds when my dad had at least one and likely two seizures in front of the paramedics that was not an option anymore.  The Paramedic also noticed that they were malnourished, so he pink slipped my mom in as well.   From St’ E’s  they went to Park Vista, which is where they are now.  

Dad broke his hip, mom has fallen many times, something that was happening before she went in.  It’s been hard to watch, harder to get them to accept help, which is one of the reasons I’m glad they are where they are.  I know that they are at least having real food offered to them.  That there is care for when one of them falls or is ill.  

Which brings me to this week.  

I got a call from Park Vista.  The psychiatrist had been in to see both of them.  My mom is not eating, has not been and doesn’t want too.  They wanted to know about giving her an appetite inducer to make her want to eat more, I had to make that choice.  My dad informed the doctor that he did not want to get up out of bed.  He was going to stay there.  He told Amberly that he wanted to go before my mom.  

Last night we had a meeting with Hospice regarding my mom.  This is when I found she was not just diagnosed with dementia but has Alzheimers.  Something that I suspected but to see that word in writing just makes it more real. The decisions that we are having to make are heartbreaking, but at the same time it’s even more heartbreaking to watch my mom being so not herself, to watch my dad choosing to just not.  

In some way’s I’ve already said goodbye to them both, because to be honest the people that are in Park Vista, especially my mom, are not themselves anymore, not by a long shot.  LouEllen had been slipping way for years and has now become a shell of what she once was.  All the filters gone, all the joy sucked out of life.  My dad is still there sometimes, but also not there others.  He’s about three or four months behind my mom.

I wanted to give people that wanted to know what was going on a bit more information than just pray for them and go see them if you can.  I have purposefully kept things on Facebook somewhat vague, choosing to let people know they are in a sad state but also that they could use connection in some way.   I’m giving a bit more detail because I know my parents have had an impact on many people, I know that they are loved and prayed for and missed.  I want people that are interested to have a better understanding of what’s going on in the hopes that this will give you a bit more information for when you go into prayer and they are dropped into your heart, as well as if you are thinking of visiting.  Some of you that have know what you will witness, those that have not perhaps this will prepare you for what you will experience.  

Thank you for your prayers and concern.  I know that they appreciate it even if they don’t realize what’s happening. 

 

Haunted Houses

My first haunted house was the JC’s haunted house on the way to Niles.  It was down on the right in what is now…ironically enough a church.  The long low white building had room after room of “scary things,” at least I am sure there were several rooms of scary, truth is the only room I really remember was this one that had fake grass a wooden bridge and blacklight lit flowers, as you walked across the bridge you heard the telltale signs of a chainsaw and were treated to someone with a chainsaw minus the blade of course, I think they had modified it with a bike chain or something I don’t remember exactly but they came at you and I remember the chainsaw being pushed against the top of my hand as a masked stranger tried to scare us. 

The other day I was told I looked haunted and sad when as we left church.  It was true.  I did.  I probably look haunted and sad a lot when it comes to God stuff, not because of God but because of me.  I realized something though.  I wonder how many people secretly view church as as a haunted house.  I think of all the people that have tried church and been burned (not me) that have been involved in church and fallen apart and just plain fallen even as they were in some form of leadership (me,) and all the in-between people who have been trying so hard to figure out what it is that God wants and they for some reason figure the church is the place to find that answer.   Of course it should be, but to be honest many times it’s not.  Church becomes scary when things aren’t what they should be both in our personal life but also in the churches life.   When we look into the institution that has become the church in America, wether we like it or not there is a disconnect.  A disconnect from reality, method, missive, and truth.  Church people use scripture to justify a disconnect from reality, but Jesus never disconnected from the reality of his surroundings so why do we.  Second Corinthians talks about coming out from among them and being separate.  This would seemingly tell the church as a whole to circle the wagons, to go with the us four and no more way of life and yet there is ample evidence throughout scripture of just the opposite being what we are supposed to do.  Jesus regularly ate with and spent time with sinners, he was judged for it continually.  The great commission tells us to go into all the world not just go into all the churches.  Paul himself talks about becoming all things to all people that he may save some.  

So what does this whole come out from among them and be separate thing mean?  Personally I think it has a lot more with what we do behind closed doors be it our home doors or the doors of the church.  Not acting like the world acts when it comes to interaction with people who are not like us, not doubling down on behavior that justifies our personal desires or understanding of how things are supposed to be.  It means that when people from outside the church actually set foot in the church or in our homes they find things different than what they would get if they walked into the club or any of the myriad 12 step programs, or trivia night at the local watering hole.  It means that where they expect to find bigotry and hate and judgmental people who look down their noses at those around them they find love and acceptance and truth.  A truth that does not shy away from the hard things, but that also recognizes that everyone is not at the same point in their journey.  The thing is. To many churches can be like a house of horrors with the individuals that make up the church the monsters providing the jump scares and secret uncomfortable feeling of things not being right even if a person can’t put their finger on what’s wrong. 

Every week year after year I planned and studied and taught and preached and sang and and and.  It became who I was the planning and the studying and the preaching and the singing.  The problem is, it’s not supposed to be that way.  I’m not supposed to become all those things, and so there are many times that I find myself sitting in church and living with the feeling of being in a haunted house.  The ghosts of Aaron past along with the  monsters of what was and what could have been hiding behind every pew or chair or pulpit.  The glowing cross and banners hanging on the walls less inspirational and more trappings of terror.  The people all playing their unwitting part in haunting this place that is supposed to be a place where comfort, understanding, truth and healing occur.    

And that is the problem.  My faith is important to me.  How I interact with that faith matters.  I find myself getting ready for church on Sunday and there are times when it’s just easy, that I get dressed and head in and all that fun stuff, and then there are the Sundays that I have to psyche myself up. I have to look at the whole messy thing as survival.  I’ll be the first to admit that all of this is because of personal feelings.  It is not at all about those around me it’s on me but when the monsters start coming I can’t help but wonder how many others are sitting there with similar thoughts and feelings.  That church is something to be conquered or endured rather than something to refresh and restore, even when that restoration is the result of hard questions about personal beliefs and understandings.  

So how do we do it.  How do we come out from among them and be all things to all people?  How do we turn the haunted houses of the church into a place where things can and do change in a persons life because of the encounter they have not just with the pastor and the music and even God for that matter,  but the encounter they have with others that so mirror the image of the one that they say they follow.  The encounter that could make all the difference in a persons world?  I don’t know.  I have no clue what the answer is to that question and honestly it’s not necessarily one that I have any business wrestling with, but I still do.  What that means is not something I can explain or understand and I’m not really into trying to figure it out.  

And so I leave you intrepid reader.  Be well and do good to the people you come in contact with. 

A

525,600...

 Back in the last century RENT hit the stage.  The songs the sound the content, all very much an ode to individuality, creativity, avarice, and many other adjectives, some warm and fuzzy, some hard and sad and angry.  From the opening refrain that asks us how you measure 525,600 minutes to the haunting strains of Without You it’s an amalgamation of joy, and sorrow mixed with a bit of excess and an eye towards activism that is easily missed if you get lost in the drama of it all.  

This is not a review of RENT.  I don’t begin to command the kind of following that would make that something anyone would really care to read, besides it’s much to late to review a musical and a movie that’s origins began with a workshop production 30 years ago, and yes it was 30 years the first workshop happened all the way back in 1993.  

This is a review of 2022, well not so much a review as a kind of workshopping. There are many ways that I could review 2022.  A little bit under a year ago life caught up with me.  These pages are full of what happened, of guilt, angst, anger and self flagellation.  Rehearsing all that happened a year ago is not what this is about.  If you want a picture of that just look at the posts littering 2022 and you’ll be able to piece it together. So what do I mean when I say life caught up with me?  I mean all the things that I had been pushing off, stuffing down, trying to deny working hard to not show exploded.  For the first time in who knows how long I was forced to acknowledge things as they were.  To stop sugar coating words and phrases and actions.  I was told what contributed to my choices and decisions. I was looked at and pitted by some and relived by some and written off by some.  I believe I can safely say that I have never tried to sugar coat what happened, nor have I fallen back on mental health as an all encompassing absolution of my own choices.  Sure the lack of attention to my own very real issues stemming from years of hard things contributed, but that’s all,  it contributed, I refused to look at any other way except the one that seemed like the only thing I could do, fully knowing there was more and better and safe ways.  So one way to workshop 2022 would be to say it was the year that I finally came face to face with myself and all the ugly that that can entail.  The fact that I am writing this tells me that it was for all intents and purposes a horribly awful good thing that happened.  I finally stopped listening to the whispers in my head, and started to listen to the world around me.  My wife, my children and the people who have chosen to wade into life with me.  I call things what they are, I let myself get frustrated and I name it.  I beat myself up still, a lot but that’s to be expected.  I have a lot to beat myself up for, but it’s a productive buffeting as opposed to a debilitating one.  

Checking into a mental health facility is a humbling experience.  It’s that place that other people go to.  It’s a safe place for people that are broken mentally to start the mending process.  It’s a place that “crazy” people go, right?  I walked into that space and spent two weeks give or take a day or so finding out what was wrong with my brain.  I still am amused at the faces of the professionals that were so helpful when they had me rehearse everything that had brought me to the place I was in.  Equally interesting is what happened when I recounted all the things that had happened.  There was a lot of crying, a lot of being angry, a lot of getting used to medication that would regulate the parts of me that needed a bit of a boost.  Through all of it I wrote in the journal you see with a rubber pen.  When I look back through the pages of that journal I am grateful that I am here writing this.  Things could have gone very differently, It’s a testament to my wife and family, and a couple of close friends that I’m not just alive, but I’m getting back the parts of me that I had lost or buried, or just plain forgotten.  

The hard work.  There is no other way to explain it but hard work when it comes to moving forward.  It takes work and medication to not let myself sink.  There are reminders all over the place of the things that contributed to the depression and ptsd.  Dreams have started to push in again and sometimes they are good ones, but many times they are just off, leaving me with a weird feeling when I wake up.  I’ve been letting myself get “mad” if that makes sense.  I used to just stuff it or say never mind and while there are times that I do that I am catching myself and letting my wife catch me at it more which makes things much easier. 

Coming face to face with the never agains has been one of the most challenging things that I have had to do.  We have lost a lot in the past few years, some of it was because of me some of it was just because things happen.  Driving down the road or walking through a store, hearing certain songs, or seeing certain things in the aisle grabs the roots of sadness and anger and tugs them from below the surface of life.  

I preached my last sermon February 6, 2022.  I’ve read over it, in the year since.  I wish I could have preached a better sermon that day, in fact looking back at those last weeks I wish I could have been a better person, a better husband and father and pastor.  I wasn’t it’s that simple.  Too caught up in my own everything, not seeing what was really happening, not wanting to see what was really happening.  

It’s interesting to me, the drive to do and be something.  How do you measure a year in the life of a person that was a pastor that destroyed so many things and people without intending too.  What do you say.  I know what some of the comments on articles posted to Facebook have been.  I’ve read them and gotten angry all over again not at the people who wrote them but at myself for hurting those people and others. For damaging the case for following Christ in so many eyes.  Sin has a ripple effect in everyones life but in a leaders life, in a pastors life that ripple effect can quickly turn into a wave, crashing down on the unsuspecting, the ones that trusted the ones that loved and even the ones that weren’t sure.  Each left to deal with it, many to turn and walk away because of the hypocrite that was caught out.  

I fix computers now.  I get up every morning gather the parts and head off down the road precision screw drivers, static mat and work phone in hand.  It’s a good thing. I really enjoy it.  The beginning middle and end of it all.  The ability to see a problem and then go in and fix it, ending the call with a working tool that a customer can now use to complete their tasks.  In each place I go I wonder.  I wonder what’s really going on in minds and hearts.  I wonder, when I go to a factory and fix a laptop or a desktop, when I walk into the person who is working remotely from home, or the time I was called to a church to fix a track pad.  Each of those places I wonder.  I wonder what the person is really dealing with, really hiding, because let’s be clear, most of us are.  Most of us don’t show the world around us what’s going on.  Some of that stems from self preservation, some from arrogance, some from shame.  It’s all in degrees too.  I am not for one moment suggesting that everyone has as big a mess as I did.  But everyone has a mess.  What we do with it is our business, unless it effects others, and lets face it, while those messes of humanity that we all are, may start out small, manageable, and even relegated to only effecting us but that doesn’t last long.  There’s a ripple effect that soon begins.  Soon there are more and more people impacted, hurting and angry, sad, worried rightfully so, but just because things make sense and have justification does’t make it any easier, if anything those reasons hurt more, or have the potential too.  

How I measure the year in my life is with relationship, family, and mental health.  Don’t get me wrong, there has been repentance.  There are times that I suffer from there’s no way God is cool with me, and I have to remember in those instances that He chooses to love me where I am as I am, he chooses to forgive me and then toss that mess away, even while he knows that it’s harder for me to do so, yeah harder’s not right impossible is more like it.  

I am so very lucky though. I have a family that loves me a wife and kids and now grandkid who actually want to be around me, which is an amazing thing.  The relationships that I have with them are grounding and for that I’m constantly amazed and surprised and thankful.  The other piece of it is the mental health piece.  The ability to acknowledge the issue and live in that moment the moment where I know I need help and am willing to go after it.  

Johnathan Larson was right when he wrote Seasons of Love the best way to measure the year is in the seasons Love sprinkled throughout it. 

Be well intrepid reader. 

Until next time.  

A

New Year, New You.

It’s a new year.  I mean yeah of course it is.  That’s what happens, days and days and days go by and soon they add up and the next thing you know it’s been weeks or months or even years.  The problem is as all those days and months and years pile up life happens and if you’re not careful, if I’m not careful it’s easy to look back and wonder.  What the heck.  How did I get here? Am I really?  Did I just?  

That’s the thing about a new year, it makes us look back, not just at the year we just ended but at all the years, and in looking at all those years it’s so much easier to see all the times that the wheels came off, that the choices were wrong, that the circumstances could have been, or should have been or would have been if only.  I’m not sure why I do that.  I mean that’s not really accurate.  I know why I do it.  People like me, tend to worry more about other people liking us than we should.  We worry more about what we can’t do than what we can.  We have long ago taken down the mirror in our minds and replaced it with a gothic portrait of ourselves as we want to be seen, and every time we look at what should be a mirror that can show us areas that can be improved, that need work and can then, at a later time, show us progress, we actually look at that portrait and soon it is covered with all our failures, all our bad choices, all our ugly parts, all our bad things, all our sins real and imagined. The worst part is, we can see portions of the painting underneath but it’s getting covered over more and more by things that we add.  There are times that those things are legitimate, but many times those things are perceived.  We are our own worse critic.  

I can almost promise you that anyone who has ever stood in front of a group of people and talked for a living has this same situation going on, especially the ones that are supposed to be breaking down religious texts and helping people grow in their faith.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not just those people.  Arguably comedians do it, motivational speakers, lecturers all of them struggle.  

The thing is, in order to be good at stand up, or preaching, or motivational speaking, or lecturing, you have to have a well of emotions to draw from, at any moment, if you’re good at what you do, you can draw from sadness, or joy, from anger, or melancholy, or indignation, pride, a bit of arrogance, sarcasm or humor.  You have to have that well and then you have to know when and how to dip into it.  To read the room and to know the timing the beats and where a story or point will have the most impact.  

The point is when you’re good at it, when it works, there’s nothing like it.  It’s like a drug, and when it’s all going the way it’s supposed to, you hold that group of people in that mysterious place woven of words and inflection and tone and emotion. But there is a price.  A price that you pay every time you do it, especially when you are doing it well and it is that price that can take its toll on you in ways that can be destructive.  That destruction looks different for everyone.  No ones personal Armageddon looks the same as any other persons, many times they are wars fought in secret, slowing tearing apart the real person that is behind the public image, sometimes they are wars that start out in the trenches but soon blossom in to full blown mushroom clouds that can be seen from miles around.  

All of this brings me back to the idea of what the New Year is supposed to be.  We’ve all been told that at 12:01 AM on the first day of January things can and should be different.  Even though we know better.  Even though every other 12:01 has found us wanting, maybe this year.  Maybe this year can be different, maybe this year we can do that thing we’ve been putting off. We can actually have that clean slate we promise ourselves and others.  We can start fresh and write not just a new chapter but a whole new story.  One that has us taking a hatchet to that portrait, hanging that brand new floor length mirror, facing 12:02 with the knowledge that we are not the sum of our past but we are who we choose to be now.  

That all sounds amazing, and yet we know better, we all know better, it’s not true is it.  We don’t really chop up the portrait, the mirror isn’t floor length, at best it’s a 12’ by 12’.  We are doing it again we are dipping into that well and weaving those words to ourselves and it’s great until it isn’t.  Until reality sets in, until all that stuff that we tell ourself doesn’t matter comes back and taps us on the shoulder waiting for us to turn and when we do we find ourselves falling into the too wide grin of something all together not ok that should have no power over us and yet still is able to get us in the end.  The ever present jump scare that we fall for every time.  

Instead of New Year new you, wouldn’t it be better to say something more realistic. Like.

Last year was hard, in fact a lot of years have been hard.  Sure there have been really awesome things that have happened, there have been good things in life, and there have been really bad things, there have been times that crawling under the covers was preferable to waking up, that the decisions were the wrong ones, not just bad but wrong.  All of these things are true, just like they will be true in the next 12 months.  Instead of promising myself a new me, I’m going to ask the one who made me to work on the parts of me that need worked on the most.  I’m going to accept that He may not work on what I want Him to or think He should work on.  I’m going to learn to live with the bad stuff from before and the good stuff.  I’m going to walk every day trying my best to be more like Jesus and less like myself. 

That’s what I want to do this year.  That’s what I’m going to do this year.  I won’t be dipping into that well, it’s likely that I’ll never dip into it again, and that’s okay.  In some ways it’s almost a relief, but if I’m honest in many ways it’s a big ball of sad that the one who made me is helping me deal with every day