Bookends

TEN TALES, TENDERIZED

Sometimes hope lives among the pages. The chapters are laced with it. The story arcs aren’t always easy, but we travel through life, ascending and descending on strings tied to hope and possibility. Even the dark chapters are typically accompanied by some sort of hopeful illumination. The heavy parts are at least still acquainted with the lighter things.

But other times, hope dries up. The bottom falls out, and the strings are severed. These times, hope is only in the bookends.

This is a story about hope. But for reasons I wouldn’t know till much later, hope only lived in the bookends.

Jaded about pastors. Jaded about friends.

When I got to Little Rock, I sent my wife, Rhonda a text about how excited I was to share with her what I had been feeling and thinking about God and faith and I sent her the song.

While in the mighty waters, I had avoided every friendship, every conversation, every place where we might accidentally talk about Jesus. It was just so, so painful to know that He was still silent.

Even with my family, even with my wife, I would avoid anything remotely spiritual, if I could. So just broaching this subject got the response,

“I’m anxious to hear baby”.

When I finally got home, we rocked in the chairs on our front porch in the new summer warmth. I shared and we wept and she asked questions and I was still scared, but I could tell that light was starting to break through in cracks.

She told me she never doubted that I would be back. Not just that hope would return, not that faith would rise again. But that these parts of me that are so core to who I am would return and I would be back.

And it meant so much.

side note: I was still going to church. I was extremely pessimistic and flippant and very silent about all of it. Like I shared earlier, in no way was I evangelistic in the way that I wanted anyone else to lose all sense of hope and faith, especially my kids and my wife. Like, if Jesus is working for you, I don’t want to be the one to break that. But in order to survive, I had to go numb to all of it.

Again, I’m grasping at words to describe the difficulty of faith no more.

But this is what it felt like to have faith return.

When I would hold a doubt, I couldn’t set it down, because I was tethered to it, so it would drag me further down, because anywhere I set it, nothing could hold it.

So in the moments where it felt like the doubt was held, like even in the unanswered question there was something substantial, it was like a molecule of faith was suddenly back, and the feeling was visceral.

It was on May 21st when I decided to start journaling again. Journaling has been my prayer practice for more than a decade.

In November of 2023 was when the doubts had started to become so unshakable.

I was standing in this hollow, looking out at the field behind it, listening to the song, when all of a sudden, the whole song flipped, and it wasn’t me thinking about loving my family, it was Jesus singing these lyrics over me.

Over the next 45ish minutes, the lyrics and love of my friend Jesus just washed over me.

The lyrics carried me to the surface of the mighty waters.
The melodies swirled around me as I let Him sing over me.
The harmonies helped me believe that we were together again.

And as I stood in the light for the first time in a long time, these landmarks and waymaking points of interest from throughout my life floated to the surface and Jesus helped me see so much about how He had been working.

Jesus brought me ten different memories, ten stories, ten tales.

None of them are monumental, but they’re all meaningful, and they help to weave a tapestry of why I’m not silent anymore, why I’m emerging from the darkness, why hope lives in the bookend on the other side of the mighty waters, and why there are more shelves with more books with more chapters and more hope to come.

The first sermon I ever preached was when my friend asked me to share my story for our youth group. I was supposed to speak for 20 minutes. I only spoke for 12. And I cried the whole time. We both agreed that I had lots of gifts, but preaching was not one of them.

So a couple months later, when I told him I felt like I needed to preach a sermon on Philippians 3, he reminded me of what happened the last time. But this was different.

The first time I was asked to say something.
This time I had something to say.

I had a literal dream, a wake-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night dream that was so vivid of me preaching this sermon, putting my take on another sermon I had heard. There was this sure sense of we needed this here in the town we lived in. I think the original sermon was called Blocks & Boards when Rob Bell preached it at his church, but even if it wasn’t, that’s what we called it.

My friend who scheduled the preaching agreed, we found a date and put it into motion.

We had set up the chairs in an inward facing circle, wide enough where you weren’t uncomfortably staring at each other, and I meandered through the middle of that circle, stepping over and around a messy pile of blocks and boards, and preached about finding our identity in Christ, how we consider it all loss for the sake of knowing Christ.

I had recruited seven people to be a part of the sermon by picking up a block or board and writing out their credentials, whatever parts of their identity that came to mind while I preached. Good stuff. Bad stuff. Family stuff. Friend stuff. The way they saw themselves. The way that others saw them. Because when Paul says “I consider EVERYTHING a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord,” he meant everything. The good. The bad. The ugly.

So in the middle of the sermon, the seven helpers went and grabbed a block or a board to write on. One of my friends who obliged my invitation, she ended up with the largest board to write all her everything on. She told me this story afterward, and it is the tale that Jesus reminded me of as he sang over me in the hollow.

As I was writing, there were all kinds of things that came to mind. But there was one nagging thing that the HS kept surfacing. I was able to dodge it, push it under and hope it would sink away for good as I wrote and wrote and wrote all of the other things.

But it didn’t go away.

You preached for longer than I thought you would and I was stuck there with this one part of me that I didn’t want anyone to know and I definitely didn’t want to talk to Jesus about. But as I sat there and couldn’t shake the thought, I hesitantly put the crayon back on the board.

I timidly started to write the letter s.

A small s.

And I knew that it wasn’t right, so I caved to the HS and wrote in large letters across the center of the biggest board SUICIDE SURVIVOR.

I kept my arms over it so no one would see.

And when you got to the point of preaching where we were all supposed to bring the blocks and boards back to the center, I was so relieved because I could put the board upside down so that no one could see it.

But mine was the last one. It was the top of the table we were building, so I had to stand there for a bit while the base was assembled.

And in an instant, standing there, hoping to hide the part of me that was so embarrassing while still hoping and trying to count it as loss for the sake of knowing Jesus, in an instant, I had a whole experience with Jesus.

In my mind we were suddenly walking through a hallway and there were all these doors and we would go in these rooms, me and Jesus, and we looked at my conversion and my baptism and the times when he was with me and helped me grow.

And then we came to a door that was locked.

I didn’t have to go in to know what was behind that door.

So he looked at me, with those deep brown eyes, he looked at me and said he wanted to go in.

I told him no.

I knew what was in there.

It was the worst stuff.

And there was so much.

It was like if we opened the door it was going to be like it is in the cartoons when a crammed closet is opened and all of the stuff was just cascading out like a shame-filled landslide.

So we stood there and he just looked at me.

And I caved.

So he reaches down, and he turns the doorknob, and pulls gently and I’m bracing myself for the onslaught.

But it doesn’t come.

We peek in, and it’s a whole room, vast and bright white and looks like an art gallery, photos and paintings on the walls with enough room to wander around them and spend time at each exhibit and soak it in.

So we walk in the gallery and we get to the first photo and it’s me. At my worst. It’s how I remember it. But there’s one difference.

Jesus is in the photo too.

He was there.

He was there all along.

He was with me.

And it was like this in every photo. Every painting. Every painful thing.

I was never alone.

I don’t know all of the ways that Jesus was with me while I was under the mighty waters. I didn’t get a hallway and an art gallery. I don’t have photographs where unholy moments become holy ground.

But I have this story.

And I have this hope.

And Jesus reminded me that even when I couldn’t see in the dark, he was there.

And for me, this moment, this memory, this tale, this gift, this was the first new, full seed of faith.

One of the last sermon series I preached at my old church was during the season of Lent and it was all about the cross. Our creative team had done a great job of crafting some extra crosses which we had placed in different spots around the sanctuary. On this particular Sunday we had removed random seats or groups of seats to place the crosses right in the middle of all of the people.

There was one giant cross, the largest one in the room and we placed it directly in front of the little stage where I was preaching so it would be in the way for people watching me preach throughout the sermon. I don’t remember the content of the sermon, but rather than look it up or make up the context for you, just know that it was about the centrality of the cross. I guess it doesn’t really matter for this tale. What matters was how I ended the sermon. This was the memory that Jesus reminded me of as he sang over me in the hollow.

I finished by slowly walking down the stairs around the side of the little platform, and I picked up the cross and I carried it back around the side and up the few stairs and I set it down right where I had been preaching.

Then I walked back down the stairs, and I remember exactly where I sat because in the first service I joined the rest of us and sat right next to my grandmother. And I sang the simple tune with the unforgettable lyrics:

I have decided to follow Jesus,
no turning back,
no turning back.

The cross before me, the world behind me,
no turning back,
no turning back.

That’s it. That’s how we ended. I think that we just turned on some music and let people go without dismissing them and if it was helpful, we could just linger.

As Jesus was bringing this memory to me, and even more so as I’ve shared this story, I’ve been reassured over and over that this was never untrue.

I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back.

Going through the mighty waters was only ever running to Jesus. For reasons I’m still learning and may never know, he chose to be silent during this time.

The cross before me, the world behind me, no turning back.

It wasn’t that I was coming back to Jesus. It wasn’t like I was repenting of some heinous sin or, gasp, backsliding.

It’s all part of the same journey.

I had thought through this ten thousand times during the last year and a half, and I’ve always held it to be true that God gives us the amount of faith that we get for the time that we have it. Faith is a grace and a gift. And during this time, I had none. I can’t do a lot of things, but I can do math. God gives and God takes away. As I understand this now, it wasn’t because of anything I did or thought or didn’t do. God has reasons and for that time, I went without faith, and Jesus was silent.

But it was all the same journey.

No turning back. No turning back.

I’m not starting over. I’m just farther along the path.

No turning back. No turning back.

There was a book I read a very long time ago by a pastor in Texas named Kyle Lake. The book was called Understanding God’s Will. I honestly don’t remember most of the book, but the theme of it has always stuck with me.

He talked about God’s will being like that of a father for a son.

It’s not that he wants to take the wheel and then there are all of these precise times where we must act like a perfect puppet throughout, not just any given day, but every single day. But if we don’t do it perfectly we will have to settle for this plan B or C or Z version of God’s will.

It’s not like that.

Sure there are times in life where there is a clear directional movement, where God is asking us to go to a certain place at a certain time for a specific amount of time.

But that’s not all day, every day.

Instead, God’s will is that we would make wise decisions. Lean on Him, lean on the wisdom of the people He has brought into our lives, and make a wise choice.

Lots of times we agonize about which thing God might want us to do, when really, his will is simpler than that.

God’s will is just that we’d make a wise choice and go.

The important part is rarely the where / when,
the will of God is who we are as we go.

When we get to where we are going,
as well as all along the way,
that we would carry heaven with us,
that we would be citizens
of the Kingdom of heaven,
that we would conduct ourselves
in a manner worthy
of the gospel of Christ.

Without getting into the difficult details, a lot of the light seeping through the surface of the deep waters was realizing how the blame that I had placed on God was misplaced.

Some was on me, the blame.
Some was on some specific people.
But most of it was on all of us.

For reasons beyond my reasoning, we can choose, and very often do, we choose to carry hell with us when heaven has come near and we have full access to carry heaven instead.

But we carry hell. And the dark persists.

Other people do, sure.
But so do I.
So do you.
We carry hell.
And the dark persists.

But heaven is still invading here,
so it doesn’t have to be like this.

During the last year and a half, I never thought that Jesus’ teachings were wrong. I continued to live by the principles I had learned in a long relationship with him, but I couldn’t stand the pain of the silence in the midst of all of my questions and doubts.

Some things are definitely clearer for me on this side. Lots of stuff happens that isn’t God’s will. Free will is alive and well.

It’s a mystery that is clearly a mystery, as my own free will gets mingled into all the mundane and difficult things. There aren’t good answers to all of the questions. But my doubts have been met with a new dose of faith, a gift I never expected to arrive.

In that moment, I suddenly didn’t need answers.

I just needed to be with Jesus.

And we were.

This memory is loaded for me. I’m not going to get into all the reasons why it’s got some difficulties because that’s not what this is. If you recognize the name below, you can probably do the math on some of the difficulties.

But Jesus brought it to me all the same, so here we go.

I remember listening to a sermon that Steven Furtick was preaching about the differences between fighting for victory and fighting from victory.

I remember where I was standing in the old youth center where my office used to be, standing there looking outside through these metal strips we had turned into these divider walls and wondering if that would ever be true, that I would fight from victory instead of for it.

When I knew I was done working as a pastor in Oroville, it was not a relief.

It was equal parts incredibly sad and undeniably true.

The HS grafted this new role into my heart that I was going on this tentmaking journey, making apps and devoting myself to preaching.

I had so many plans about how to make that happen. I applied so much of what I learned about doing ministry from a strategic center that I could forcefully advance the kingdom if I worked hard enough and applied myself.

I cannot tell you how lifeless it was to try to force it, then how dead that all became in the mighty waters.

Dead is an understatement.

I didn’t make my bed in hell, too afraid that it was a place that God and I would have to speak.

I buried it all. There was no funeral. No fanfare.

I just quietly opened my hands, all alone, let it slip through like sand and resolved that it was finished.

So this memory hits about victory and how we fight and the thing I liked about it so much at the time was trying to figure out how to stop fighting FOR and start fighting FROM.

These were the clever words that gave me the dopamine and the day dreams.

But in the rewiring of this memory, the sand forming a new castle in my heart, it wasn’t the for/from that intrigued me.

It was the fight.

It wasn’t until I was starting to process through this that I started to recognize how much this meant.

I’ve always struggled to be present in the moment. Even when God is palpably moving, my mind is quick to outrun my heart, trying to figure out WHAT IS THIS FOR? But coming through these mighty waters, I’ve become more present and more capable of letting THIS just be for now. Maybe someday THIS will be for THAT, but in the moment that it’s all happening, I don’t need to tie it to some future moment.

So I just listened to Jesus reminding me that it doesn’t matter if we win or lose at whatever it is that we’re doing. It’s already been won. And the fight is a fight that we fight. And the important part isn’t the fight. It isn’t whether it is from or for.
It doesn’t matter if it feels like victory or if it feels like defeat. It matters that WE fight.

He was with me. Me and Him. We.

I didn’t feel it till much later, much closer to the moments of actually writing this all down that I started to feel like there was more fight left in me.

But the fight isn’t something I’m trying to win.

The fight is something WE are in.

And that is enough.

Because of the way that I had held this song in my heart as a future gift that I would be able to give to my kids, as a wonderful picture of how I want to and will love them, having it flipped and sung over me put me into this state of being the child.

It reminded me of how much I wanted to grow up when I was young.

I wanted to find my own church.
I wanted to get a job.
I wanted to move out.
I wanted to move away.
I wanted to provide for myself.
I wanted to get married.
I wanted to have a career.
I wanted to be responsible.
I wanted to be grown up.

It was during this memory, surrendered to the moment, letting God be the father and me be the child, when every line of the song was this beautiful flipped experience.

I had grown old, but God was still young, and he was inviting me to join him.

I didn’t need to be old.
I didn’t need to be wise.
I didn’t need to figure it out.
I didn’t need to have the right words.
I didn’t need to know where we were going.
I didn’t need.
I didn’t need.

I was just there, being cared for.

The verse I had taped to my desk for the last decade was Psalm 23:1. I just loved how the slight variation from how I had heard it growing up so often created a different tenor in my relationship with God.

THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD;
I LACK NOTHING.

I don’t remember when I got rid of that taped piece of paper, and I don’t know where that piece of paper is now, but it’s not on my desk.

While I was in the mighty waters, I probably trashed it.

For years I tried to figure out how to shrink the lack down to zero.

I had tried to carve a path to become a thriving grown up, but in this moment, my good shepherd sang a different tune over me. I had gone through such long nothingness that I was coming out on the other side like a newborn child, lacking nothing, perfectly cared for.

I found zero.

 And all my life
I’ve been fighting
For a place
I could thrive
But it turns out,
all the things
I do to survive
They only make me old
But you raise me like a baby

–John Mark McMillan, Death in Reverse

One of my favorite things in life has been sharing music with friends.

One of my favorite memories was in high school, my best friend had this VW Golf and when we were old enough to venture out to California to find concerts and roller coasters, we were driving with the windows down and blaring music that we both really loved at the time and his speakers were just the original stock system, and we thought it was fun to put our legs against the door speakers so you could feel the bass.

Windows down, music up, enjoying each others company, feeling so incredibly free.

So here we are in the hollow, enjoying music together, me and Jesus.

And for a couple rounds of the repeating lyrics spinning around us, the song was able to shift into this beautiful dance of the flow of love.

The way that Jesus loves me as his friend.

The way that I love my friends.

The way that he loves me as his family.

The way that I love my family.

The way my family loves me.

The way that we love our enemies, our strangers, our neighbors.

The way that love works.

I’m a better friend with Jesus because of the way that my friends love, the way that I love my friends. I’m a better husband and father because of the way that Jesus loves me as his friend.

And in the spinning reality of how we love,

Love isn’t a chore.
Love isn’t even a command in this moment.
Love is just this place where I live.

And it’s disorienting
or orienting
and suddenly alive.

Because I have my Friend back.

Back in the fall of 2023, right before I sunk to the depths of the mighty waters, I found a clear path for this tentmaking adventure. I knew I wanted to walk down this path, helping us realize and live another way. As I was writing the hopeletter and setting goals and forcing myself to apply myself in ways that seem so foreign now but were the only way I knew to work at it then, I printed out a little reminder that I put on my desk to remind me to write.

EVERY DAY WRITE
LIKE YOU’RE RUNNING
OUT OF TIME

If Lin-Manuel could capture the ferocity in which Hamilton wrote so much in such a short period of time, surely the work I was doing was more important and more needed, so I must remind myself that it’s important and time is short.

Time was short because I had become oddly familiar with the idea that my own death was coming soon. Not that I was going to end it myself, but that it makes sense that everyone dies and since we aren’t even guaranteed tomorrow, I should live like it and get to it.

Part of the memory is also tied to another one.

There was this church conference called Q where I watched some of the sessions online. You know how when you’re at any of these sorts of things you sort of scan the list for familiar names and interesting topics? Well, there was a name I didn’t know and I still can’t remember, but the thing that caught my eye was that he was 99 years old.

Most speakers are younger than that. Usually.

He talked about how he had watched as multiple generations who have now passed were sure they were the last one before Jesus came back, that it happened in his own peer group, and in his children, and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, there was always this sense that it had to be soon.

They were all wrong.

He talked about how we most certainly should keep watch and ready yourselves for when Jesus returns. But, when we decide that it is imminent and allow that to affect the way that we attempt to fulfill the great commission, it’s not effective. And not only that, as we get focused on the short term, atrocities are creeping in to the people, decisions and systems which do not belong.

Stewardship recedes as we try to win the game in the last few seconds.

I remember so much about this talk. He described the effects of one generation thinking that time is running out so they just try to get as many people to profess faith as possible, effectively throwing up a hail mary in the waning seconds.

But when you multiply that across 150 years (because he talked about his grandparents all the way down to his great-grandchildren) you end up with a church that was built to sustain growth for months instead of millennia.

His proposition was that if churches would assume that the systems and structures that help support the growth and life of the body needed to last for 1000 years then it would be healthier in the next 10.

The simple act of watching and waiting for the return of Jesus without deluding ourselves that it is happening in our lifetime could create resilient pastors, organizations and churches that actually align with the Kingdom of Heaven.

It was this memory that came to mind where Jesus assured me that we’re not running out of time. Not that I know the moment or hour, but that I don’t, so work like it’s going to be awhile, ready and keeping watch.

There was this sudden ease in staying ready, in keeping watch. My whole life, that passage has been preached and processed as either an explicit call toward panic or at least an underlying urgency.

But keeping watch is the same throughout millennia.
Staying ready is the same even when nothing happens.

It was like it was finally clear, that keeping watch and readying myself wasn’t for when Jesus finally arrives, it was for me, today. Not that he is arriving today, but that this is the other way.

A calm readiness.
A sharp eye on my surroundings.
A confidence in my standing.
A vision for heaven invading earth.
And enough patience to love for real,
no matter how long it lasts.

I remember being young and the church where my dad worked as a pastor had been building a new sanctuary. I have no idea if this memory is accurate or if multiple are blending together, but this is what was brought to my mind.

There was this one Sunday where this guy Rudy Cervantes who had a traveling trumpet ministry (I don’t know either, the nineties were a different time) had come to our church. I always liked when he showed up. I know it was at least twice, but who knows, it was a long time ago, and some guy played trumpet and it sounded amazing and none of that has anything to do with this, but I love context.

Anyway, I remember that after the service, which was still in the old sanctuary, we went over to the new sanctuary and we wrote scriptures on the doorposts around the sanctuary, on the wall studs and all around that place. For some reason I remember Rudy, or maybe it was his daughter, its fuzzy and it doesn’t matter, but they wrote YOUR BANNER OVER ME IS LOVE across the header where the main double doors open for people to come in and go out.

I remember thinking how much I liked that it was there and it was written into the heart of the building and it was going to get covered with sheetrock and mud and tape and paint, but the truth was there underneath it all.

So all of this washes over me and I know that in His great love and goodness, his timing isn’t off.

This project has taken way longer than we wanted or expected it to and suddenly I realize that the timing allows me to do the thing.

And there are two sides of this.

The first is the obvious one, that I get to do the thing.
So we did. We wrote scripture throughout the house, implanting the Word on headers and doorposts in what will soon become our home.

But also, His banner over me is love.

The banner never stopped flying over my life.

It was always there, I just couldn’t see it.

His love never failed.

His love was implanted in me.

And His love has never failed.

Last October, I spent a couple hours with my friend Jamie talking about what it looks like to be complicated. The mighty waters had become my forever-normal, and since I was sure it wasn’t going to end, I figured it would be good to figure out how to live as someone who is complicated.

Jamie’s friendship is a gift, his heart is huge, and he cares so deeply and so well.

It was closing in on a year of what I was certain was going to be my forever. He had carved out some space for people to process being complicated and it seemed exactly right.

Even though he’ll open up the space for small groups to process together, we ended up being the only ones on the call that night.

The last time that we spent an extended time together, I had just started sinking beneath the mighty waters and I wasn’t completely honest with where I was at, probably because I didn’t know exactly what was going on, but mostly because it felt too heavy.

Too heavy for me, yes. But definitely too heavy to put on anyone else.

I don’t remember everything we talked about, but I remember how he held my story and wasn’t trying to fix me, but just help me find my way into the complications and be present with them.

So I’ve finally entered into the grief and started to feel my feelings surrounding all of this brokenness–some foreign, some shared, and some entirely too personal–and these simple lyrics come back to me from the night when Jamie and I talked about being complicated.

THE YOKE WAS SO HEAVY

And there were these hundreds of shards of memories, but instead of being embedded shrapnel, there’s some distance.

I can see them.
I can touch them.
But I’m not re-living the pain.

And it’s easy. And it’s light.

And it’s unexpectedly simple.

For the first time in years, I’m standing with Jesus and Jesus is with me in a way that (I cannot stress this enough) I was sure would never happen for me. Ever again. Ever.

Unless you’ve lived that, I don’t even think you can feel the weight.

But if you have, you know what I mean.

I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

But here we were, crying together, crying tethered.

And I was sure that I was with Jesus.

Because the yoke was easy, the burden light.

Easy yoke, light burden.

The phrase came to me as if from a memory, kind of like that clear eyes chant from Friday Night Lights, kind of like I was remembering something that Jesus knew but I was just learning.

Light burden.

It’s not that the burden goes away. It’s not like we’re transported to some sort of crowdless Disneyland where nothing is wrong and the food is all free and fast passes aren’t even needed. It’s way more real. And it’s not like there isn’t anything left to do but enjoy each other’s company and presence. There will be all kinds of burdens, maybe even more than before, because my capacity to care is growing every day. But the light and the lightness makes it so I can keep going.

Easy yoke.

The yoke is the work. It was made for me.

The work was made for me.
But the yoke was made for me too.

It fits right. It sits on my shoulders in a way that isn’t uncomfortable. It just amplifies the effort I put in to make the work so much more than anything I could do on my own.

And I’m not on my own.

In the days and weeks since this morning in the hollow, I feel like I’ve been walking around in the heart of Christ. I feel like I went through a heart surgery and I’m in some sort of physical therapy, where my body is learning what it is like to exist in this new new new.

So this has become a sort of litmus test for me, to see if the way that I am in the world is connected and residing in Christ.

Easy yoke. Light burden.

Anything else is a wandering without.

The sweatshirt I wore that morning was from TWLOHA and it said Tomorrow Needs You on it. Rhonda had gotten it for me for Christmas right as I was entering the mighty waters.

I seem to remember that it was part of a campaign they did for suicide prevention. Which is a roundabout way of saying that I put that sweatshirt on that morning because I wanted so bad to be alive, but the dark night had descended and I was doing my best to just keep going.

I was never suicidal.

But my hope was gone. Maybe it was buried back there in the bookend. But at the time, hope had subsided, buried beyond.

I wanted this photo for me. So I could remember this moment someday in the future. But also, there was this split second where I also thought that I might tell this story.

I hadn’t considered that I would ever tell stories about Jesus or myself again. My writing and preaching days were done. I couldn’t do it with honesty, so I wouldn’t do it at all. I wasn’t going to be that guy.

So even the split second thought caught me off guard.

And I feel like I was caught up in a memory that hadn’t happened yet. Like Jesus knew some stuff about the future that I didn’t know yet, but he was remembering all these other parts of me and it got caught in this holy avalanche.

I WANNA HOLD YOU CLOSE
BUT NEVER HOLD YOU BACK
I’LL BE THE BANKS
FOR YOUR RIVER

The river used to be a river, but the river wasn’t a river anymore.
But all of a sudden the river was a becoming a river again.

The river is how things work, how the movement of things work, how life flows.
And it had stopped.

This darkness wasn’t a river.
There is nowhere left to go.
Nothing moves me anymore.

But here I was, remembering a future memory, that tomorrow needs me and that there was some sort of movement beyond this place. The river was becoming a river again and there was a current and I wasn’t just being embraced, held close but not held back, I was going somewhere.

It wouldn’t be till farther along after some more events happened in the days and weeks that followed that I would begin to see that God’s hand on my life was never gone.

And his call on me to write and preach never left me.

I sat on our new front porch with Rhonda as she reminded me of all of this. I didn’t have a box for it, but thousands of words later I’m sure you can tell that I’ve started to see where the river goes.

The difference though is immense.

There were so many unhealthy, ungodly things that were intertwined into my mind, my heart, my rhythms because of my time in ministry where people were training me up and also acting out of self-interest, collateral damage from incalculable sin.

The work of God and the work of people in my life were so convoluted. Through therapy I started to understand spiritual and emotional abuse. And I found a lot of freedom throughout therapy.

But I’m heading into this next era of my life as someone who has braved the wilderness. There has been a stripping and untangling in me.

A reordering,
an abandoning,
a healing and
a belonging.

So when I face the statement and choose to believe that tomorrow needs me, there is this emergence of who I really am, and I’m no longer afraid to bring some of the death along with me.

I am walking in a freedom that isn’t marked as some relief from some sin or backsliding. There is an understanding so deep in my bones about standing within the heart of Christ, becoming the righteousness of God, and this is the me that tomorrow needs.

My voice still matters.

And I’m so here for it.

I can’t wait to see what kinds of adventures I get to go on with and within my Jesus.

The best is yet to come.