Solid Ground

The question we all anxiously want asked is "Who are you?" yet when it is posed, do we really know? Do we offer trite answers that are gross oversimplifications of the truth? Do we exaggerate? Possibly the reality that I am describing is solely one that I struggle with, but I have found placing them into words has been immensely useful to me.

The identity question looms large in my life. It could be solely the byproduct of my cultural makeup that compresses polar opposites into one person, or I could be simply a product of the age I live in. This struggle has only highlighted itself as I have taken up the pen over the past few months, but it is one that has - in truth - been lingering all my life because it is heavily intertwined with sense of purpose. I feel like life is a recurrent viewing of the scene of Jacob wrestling with God. Bless me already. Like most, I am not born into riches nor have I been bestowed with remarkable gifts that have set me on a meteoric path of tranquility. This firmly in mind, I continue to pour my energies into outlets that I hope will highlight what I can in fact offer. Yet this has proven frustrating as well. Especially when individuals scratch success with what appears a total lack of substance. Who has not thought of this in light of the recent teenage sensation singing about a day of the week? Seriously, what more can I do?

On the train ride this morning, Pandora hit me with a song that placed this into perspective. I was headed toward school where I read the theories of brilliant men and women who try to explain God. Some of them frustrate me while others create an immediate nod of recognition. This morning's read was the former. This theologian, titled the premiere thinker currently alive, was being interviewed and I felt like he was saying absolutely nothing relevant. I put the book away and turned on the music. The song that played I had only heard once before. It has been introduced to me two Sundays ago in a Church service. While it was beautiful, I had forgotten who sang it, the title and therefore it was an abstract memory buried in the past. When the song began it lifted me from all current thoughts of exhaustion. The song continued and as if I was struck in the head, I thought I need to stop living in a middle-of-the-road path where I care what others do, who I should be, and try to answer questions that no one is asking.

Tomorrow is Good Friday and with every fiber of my being I believe God intervened in history to save you and me. I am not speaking from religious sensationalism, emotional ecstasy, or in a last ditch effort to find self-worth. I believe in the Christ event.

Honestly, I struggle daily with mistakes I make. I am an individual who thoroughly enjoys activities that Christians have deemed secular. Where people try to tell me to rationalize my failures as part of God's plan, I cannot help but get angry with Him. And I guess therein lies the beauty. Transcendent yet immanent. The ultimate paradox.

I am a follower of Christ and I live in this world. Not in a bubble. There is no divide. As we move into this weekend, I would urge people to stop waiting for others to ask you who you are, and refrain from tying yourself in mental knots about what the answer would be. Direct the question to Him...who is He... and let the conversation unfold.

Here is the song.

What's in a name?

The room was dark; the only light was the faint glow from two small monitors above the medical table. The nurse focused her eyes on the screens as her right hand intently worked around Priscilla’s stomach. When we had Camille, we didn’t find out the sex until the moment she came out of the womb. That moment of discovery is one of the highlights of my life. This time my wife couldn’t wait. I fought the urge to know, but when the appointment is made and everyone else’s mind is made up, the anxiousness begins to set. I tried to go about life without focusing on that date, but I eagerly waited for the future to become the present.

I have always had the premonition I would only have girls. I don’t know why, but it’s a sentiment that has always been firmly entrenched in my gut. You grow up believing that the major verdicts in life – and I am referring to those that are completely out of your hands – are typically school, or job related. These are ginormous decisions that distinctly shape your entire future. I never thought differently, but this moment was in fact one of them.

I did the work, but the decision – healthy or not, boy or girl – is truly beyond my control. The nurse quietly continued her work and each minute felt longer. I screamed in my mind: Say something lady! I felt the room shrinking. A series of outcomes raced through my mind. If I leave here without knowing the sex, this lady will hear it. The imaginary movie played in my mind of me throwing a fit, but on the outside, I gave the impression of calmness.

The clock hand continued to make its way around and yet I still …had …nothing. All she pointed out were stills of a baby I could barely make out. The head. The feet. I nodded as if I saw it clear as day.

Finally the moment arrived.

“It’s a girl.” As if the nurse knew the words failed to immediately register in my mind, she spelt it out in the monitor with a clear arrow pointing to the evidence.

“G-I-R-L.”

I shouldn’t be surprised, but I was. The gravity of the situation took its time to sink in. How do I react? What will the future hold with 3 women? My shoulders dropped. I’m completely outnumbered.

An hour later we were at the coffee shop and I was still numb. Then Priscilla said, “What about Kayla?” This awoke me from my daze and I grabbed my phone and fought a ridiculously slow connection to discover the meaning of this name.

KAY-la: Who is like God?

And there it was. Reassurance. The outcomes continue to be out of my hand and the future remains unclear, but we are not God. This frustrates, angers and causes a life-long struggle between what I feel I want and what He knows I need.

Here’s to you Kayla, already teaching Dad lessons.

Age isn't so bad.

As children, adults constantly remind us that time moves fast and for us to enjoy the moment. At first the concept ‘fast’ feels completely foreign to us. You mean fast like when I ride on my huffy? Then we hit our teenage years and fast feels quite slow. I want to drive. I want to drink. We enjoy our small freedoms, but the grass truly feels greener on the other side.

Some of us may look at the adults around us and then stare blankly into the mirror and think, I wonder if I will know when I am older. You examine pictures of your parents in their youth and compare it to what they look like now. How can the skin stretch so? How can we turn into something so different? We consciously try to mature yet remain young…. but we fail.

Time moves and the birthdays add up. No longer does that date that was circled so heavily and waited upon so anxiously carry as much optimism. It turns on us and becomes a date we dread, fear and try to ignore.

In a week I turn 27 and I would like to change my own mentality. I have always felt that after 21, it is just another date. This year, I have decided to embrace it.

So in spirit of my birthday, a special thanks is in order.

Thank you Philipe age 2 for embracing brotherhood and welcoming Gaby into your world. The kingdom you ruled solo would have been boring without her.
Thank you Philipe age 7 for reminding me that $10 can feel like $1000.
Thank you Philipe age 14 for introducing me to Priscilla and beginning a life-long adventure.
Thank you Philipe age 16 for learning to drive and allowing me to begin my path to freedom and independence.
Thank you Philipe age 18 for traveling the world and bursting my bubble.
Thank you Philipe age 22 for getting an education.
Thank you Philipe age 24 for tackling fatherhood so you can realize those amazing first moments of joy in Camille.
Thank you Philipe age 27 for realizing that there is still a lot to life. Age can be good.

I remember my Dad saying to me, "I wouldn't trade my 36 for your 13". As he grew older, he would continue to say this and I always chuckled. This could not be true, but now I get it.

Maybe

When we tell people we've been together for eleven years, there is always an element of concern underlying their surprise. Every 'aww' that we receive feels as if it is wrapped in skepticism that we've thrown away our youth. "How old are you again?"

We must admit that deciding to be together for so long and at such an early age has come with its costs.
Maybe we would have gone to different universities.
Maybe one of us would have never left San Francisco and grown old in that city.
Maybe the other would have traveled extensively and would be nothing more than a Facebook update to the other.
Maybe you would have become a doctor your first time around.
Maybe I would have actually learned Arabic.

The maybes are endless, but despite the hypothetical possibilities that sound fascinating and frankly easier, I know we have chosen the better path. I know you love your romance movies, but have you ever stopped to think that maybe we not only lived one, but are living one?

Two teenagers meet. They overcome the odds of immaturity... distance... bad decisions... tragedies... and life's overall struggles to marry. They go to school together where they share their passions and push each other toward their goals. During this journey, they have a beautiful daughter.

They explore the world - small pieces at a time - together. The cities of Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago have all been called home. Trips to Brazil, various states in America, and countries through Europe have been explored hand-in-hand.

4,269 days have come and gone and there are no regrets. And what no chocolate, or bouquet can ever say is that I absolutely know that better days are ahead.

Here is to us and our chick flick.

Kids & Michelangelo

Picture two small children. A girl and a boy. They are in an enormous garden. The sound of running water mixes with the girl singing words that we can faintly make out. She lets her voice fly as she concentrates on the flower twirling in her little hand. There is joyous wonder in her face. Nearby, the boy is drawing in the dirt. As he doodles along, he digs his bare feet into the soil; squishing and releasing pebbles with his toes. There is limitless imagination in his eyes.

Suddenly a voice calls to them. Though the sound originates from a distance, they hear it as if it is whispered individually into their ears. Despite their bliss, the emergence of this calling brings an even larger smile to their faces. Instantaneous warmth permeates from them. They look at one another and run together in the direction of God.

Now look at Michelangelo's "The Creation of Adam". Reproduced a million times yet nothing takes away from the original depiction. If you view it from the lens of Genesis, we see how we are made in the image of God. Even though the two hands are not touching, you can feel the Spirit moving from the Creator to creation – the pull between one another and the two completing the same motion.

Now examine it under the lens of John 1:1. Man(kind) with its hand fully stretched out for help... and God, with just a finger, reaching out to touch man. Rescuing us. Jesus Christ has given us renewal of what we were meant to be.

All with a simple touch from God.

While we may customarily picture Adam and Eve as being adults perfectly created from the beginning, I suggest we try and view them as literal children being raised by God. They grew up in relationship with him, but eventually fell. Jesus was also born into this world as a child.

The difference is He succeeded.

"Jesus Christ is the fullest expression of what God intends humanity to be."

Momentous

As I search for my pair of Frank Barone stretchy pants, my grandparents continue laboring away on Brazilian delicacies and my wife constructs a gingerbread house with the children. I sure hope I can find those pants before the stroke of midnight, when our weeklong food festival reaches its culmination.

Over the course of the night, we will indulge ourselves with great food and company, but let’s not forget why we are here. And I do not mean simply replacing Merry Christmas with Jesus is the reason for the season. I implore you to not let one more Christmas enter the books with lip service, but let the gravity of the event sink in. Athansius once wrote,

“Only the creator can redeem the creation…[thus] what else could He possibly do, being God, but renew his Image in humanity, so that they might once more come to know him.”

So as laughs are ready to roll and new memories ready to be forged, do not forget (or come to realize) that there is something greater at work. Borrowing from Thomas Aquinas, recognize that there is something – be it Santa Claus, good food, or quality time with ones you care about – around this time that points beyond itself to something greater. Nothing is more wasteful than a life unexamined and nothing more sad than missing a beat to recognize purpose in your life.

Take a second. Step back from the table. If our lives on Earth weren’t finite, no moment we’d experience would be urgent, precious or momentous. Let’s make this Christmas one that will be felt by our future generations.

Cliché

As you begin to write regularly, you quickly encounter a recurring issue: how do I avoid using words, phrases, and sayings that are overplayed. I do not want to become just one more person to loosely incorporate words such as epiphany, diverse, and carpe diem to illustrate my point. I regularly find myself afraid to type certain words into my writings, quadruple guessing their use when I do and consistently looking at the thesaurus for alternatives. How foolish of me.

These words have become overused for a reason – they are simply amazing. They concisely illustrate a feeling you have. For instance, my dad was (and I’m sure still is) very selective when he used the word awesome. He would always remind me that this word has a lot of descriptive punch. It literally means something that inspires awe within you. While I’m sure that burger at In-N-Out was great, let’s be honest, did it really create awe within you, or simply the positive feeling of being full with the promise of a bowel movement later.

This leads me to the term carpe diem. I first recognized, and I might just be an example of my generation, this word and its meaning through the film “Dead Poet’s Society”. These two words present an entire philosophy behind it. Dude, what power!

Now what I’m about to tell you is going to rock your world. It is going to be like a boxer’s right jab to the face… A Mike Tyson crunch to the ear even.

Tone down your worrying!

Life is too short to consistently be thinking of the bad things that potentially can happen. The truth is life is not a series of ill events, but good ones with bad ones sprinkled in. Enjoy the moment. I for one am tired of receiving good news, only to immediately think Oh God, that means something bad is right about to burst my bubble, or over-thinking all the bad stories I hear to the point where they come alive in my life.

I’m not saying to use this as an excuse for all sorts of rashness and quite frankly, not a reason to get yourself wasted. What I’m saying is I want to stop thinking of seconds and counting pages …I want to learn to savor my food and enjoy that book I’m reading.

Cheers.