As the world grinds to a halt from COVID-19, artists and creatives have a unique opportunity to minister through their work.

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I’ve stopped following the news, disgusted by the obvious spin and efforts to generate and capitalize on panic in the face of uncertainty. Instead, I have turned to official documents and press releases, going straight to the source to parse out reality for myself, a return to a simpler mindset that I lost somewhere a few years back. I thank God that the subtext of our local orders seems to be a respect for individual liberties, with clauses highlighting that abridgements of constitutional rights will be deemed illegal, regardless of what the moment seems to call for.

For now, at least in the quiet corner of the world that I inhabit, the march of totalitarianism, one of my deepest fears, seems quelled, though I am not so foolish as to think for one second that there are not opportunists waiting in the wings, eager to take advantage of a crisis. Time will tell, but I will, for the time being, turn my eyes away from speculation and focus instead on what I know for sure.

I turn to church leaders, eager to hear the thoughts of those in whom we have entrusted our guidance, and hear echoed the deepest convictions of my heart: we truly do not what precisely is happening in the world, but we do know that God is sovereign, and we know that times such as these are the things that revivals are made of.

Times such as these are the moments that cause complacency to lose its luster, and the vain comforts of the material world to blow away into the dust that we have been thoroughly assured that they ultimately are. Times such as these are when we as human beings realize with utter certainty how wild this world truly is, and how little control we have.

I frankly have no idea how someone without faith in a higher power is coping with the unfolding drama that this pandemic has brought to bear. I believe in a sovereign, good God who has vouchsafed my soul, and I find myself intermittently throughout the weeks shaken at how truly alone we are in this pandemic but for the grace of God. 

Our marketplace offers nothing, a few weeks of closures having broken an unprecedented course of prosperity. Our governments have proven impotent in preparing for or implementing strategies to avoid the worst possibilities. There is no hope in this world but for God.

And that, I think, is precisely the point of this moment in history.

Western civilization has been unspeakably blessed over the course of the last century with the most prosperous society in all of human history, and our response to such providence has been a wholesale turning away from the source of our blessings. We have answered God’s provision with proclamations of His death, rejection of truth, and a loving of self.

With that said, I do not think that this moment in history is a judgment. This moment in history is a wakeup call. I believe that this moment in history will be looked upon in the years to come as one of the greatest things that has ever happened to us as a people. I believe that from this moment in history, our culture will turn back to God and put our priorities in their proper places. 

I heard an account from Wuhan, China, the source of the pandemic, from a pastor in the local church who rallied his congregation to help distribute medical supplies over the course of the last few months. As the Chinese government mobilized to crush the spread of information concerning the virus and forcibly quarantine its people, this small church body mobilized in a concerted mission to spread the Gospel.

The result of this mobilization? Revival. 

I’m stirred by the testimony that, even as lockdowns occurred, the church in China took to using online services to further inform their neighbors about  where to find medical supplies, sharing the Gospel every step of the way. I am stirred that: 

“Some started reading the Bible, some inquired about the Christian faith, some even prayed the sinner’s prayer. Some people promised to attend church meetings after the plague, and some were already attending our online meetings. We saw how that with just a little faith we must follow the Lord without fear of danger… In a short time of 60 days, we have seen a big renewal in the ministry of church members. We saw that this plague was meant to bring about a great revival of the church. This revival was not started after the end of the plague, but in the course of the plague, we saw the wonderful grace of God manifested.”

Please see the full video here, as well as the article from Dr. Michael Heiser where I found it.

I am stirred because that account from Wuhan is not unique. I have been hearing similar accounts from church communities in the West, and I think God is moving mightily throughout this time of uncertainty. 

I am stirred because during this time, there are opportunities for ministry at every corner. Be it podcasting and blogs, or motivational posts online. The world is at a standstill, and so many are grasping for hope and finding none. Celebrity culture seems to have ebbed into obscurity, the austerity of it laid bare in the face of reality.

There are families walking the streets in our neighborhood. Our church’s online presence has exploded as we reach more and more people. Neighbors are talking to neighbors. Our societal fabric and civil society seems to be reforming each and every day.

That this coincides with Holy Week, or Easter Week, I think, is miraculous. How many who may not have ever darkened the door of a church will tune in to an Easter live stream next weekend? How many will hear the Gospel for the first time?

God has gone before us to prepare the infrastructure for a mighty Kingdom work, and I am beyond excited to see it.

In my own quiet corner, I am humbled by the reality that there are ministry opportunities available that make plain the purpose of years worth of unpaid labor and struggles on project after project that seemed so trite and empty in the moment, but have built up networks and skills necessary to spread the Gospel now when the cultural soil is tilled and ready. 

I am confident that the impact of the last few weeks and whatever is to come is going to leave a mark on our world, nation, city, and community for the foreseeable future. Each generation has its collection of defining cultural moments that alter the course of history, and this is one of ours.

It is Holy Week, and for the last few years I have been privileged to lead a group of creatives in the Atlanta area in applying their talents to sharing the Gospel and ministering to the church body and city as a whole. This year we will not have a gallery opening in person, but instead online, and as such, we are at a unique crossroads as creatives.

If you are an artist or creative person, as the world around us has ground to a halt and others panic, it is highly likely that each of you has had some sort of insight that might help minister to the body of Christ in a unique way. For me personally, this came by way of realizing that my years of musing on mortality and other melancholy subjects had short-circuited panic, allowing me to step into a difficult place at my job at a critical moment in our organization’s history.

Perhaps you have had a similar experience fighting anxiety and depression, or otherwise have crossed through spiritual valleys and deserts. Perhaps you aren’t as shaken during this pandemic as everyone else because you’ve already stared death and existential angst in the eye and didn’t blink.

Perhaps this moment in history doesn’t phase you, because you’ve read enough fairy tales to know that the stories that we’ve told ourselves over the years convey nothing if not the undying truth that no matter how dark things seem, God is sovereign and there is always a light at the end of the tunnel.

Perhaps you have some transcendent insight that can speak into this moment.

Perhaps not. Perhaps yours is a different perspective and story to tell, but I know one thing for certain: the body of Christ needs to be ministered to right now, and creative people are uniquely equipped to do it.

We trade in capturing hearts and minds, and now is the time for it, more than ever.

As a church body, we can rationalize and meditate on statistics until we are blue in the face, but cold facts will not lift a wounded heart in the same way that a piece of music will. Statistics will not speak to the deep parts of the soul in the way that a well-written poem will. Executive orders and pithy comments about “getting through this together” will not encourage the lonely in the same way that paint on canvas can when wielded by someone sharing their heart.

This is a time for poets. This is a time for painters. This is a time for artists. This is a time to minister to the people in the church body and those outside of it.

How will you rise to the occasion?

The post #18: A Time for Poets appeared first on EXPATS OF EDEN.

As coronavirus brings the world to a grinding halt, I contemplate the spiritual ramifications and responsibilities of Christians and the church.

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Passing through town we see more and more people out and about walking, a stark reminder of the world that we now live in. It seems that Netflix and chill is not all that it’s cracked out to be when it’s all that is to be done.

The owner is glad to see us again and calls us by name. My wife is better with the pleasantries, I’m trying hard not to look uncomfortable…because the contrast is striking.

This is not normal. This is not the world we lived in even a week ago. The faces are all the same, but the lady behind the counter is wearing nitrile gloves and is clearly flustered as she cradles the phone, puts another customer on hold to ring us up, and cheerily greets a man who has wandered in. All in a fluid motion—impressive. Jarring. Unsettling. This is not normal.

We thank her and take our food outside to the only table still available to sit at in the area.  Local ordinances being what they are, all public seating has been blatantly removed. Tables are gone, and at the ones that are bolted down, the chairs have been stacked and shackled. We are fortunate to find a table literally welded to the cement: a wrought-iron affair with built-in seating. Let’s just see them take this away.

We dust off the pollen, say a prayer, and begin to unpack our carry-out order just a stone’s throw away from the establishment from which it came. The sun sets, the world turns, and we can’t help but wonder how things turned this upside down in the span of a week over a disease that no one we know has contracted yet, but for which the entire world has stopped spinning.

We fumble with plastic silverware and boxes. My wife has dressed up for this date… and I can’t do a damned thing to make it any more special.

The owner walks out of the restaurant and asks us if we need anything. God bless her, but we thankfully decline. Seeing our plight, she returns a few moments later with dishes and silverware. Virus be damned, she’ll take care of her customers.

It strikes me then as it has several times this week that the world, though impacted, is no intrinsically different than it was a week ago. Circumstances may have changed, but we’re all still here, still in the picture, still playing out the cosmic drama in which we’ve been cast.

For better or for worse, this is the world. This is reality. And there is much hope in that, no matter what may or may not have been said. Because we’re still here, the end is not nigh, and we have the opportunity now more than ever to rise to the occasion and live up to our best thoughts and values. This is a time for mobilization, even as we are socially distanced. This is a time for actions to line up with words. This is a time for heroes, big and small, to serve their families, friends, and communities well.

A few months ago I met with a friend over lunch, and talk quickly shifted to deep things. In the face of a fractured society constantly at each other’s throats, we pondered what could possibly come next for our nation and the world at large. What might the future hold?

I posited the notion that each generation has its landmark crises and trials: wars, depressions, pandemics, political upheaval. Rare is the generation that passes untouched. For two decades, however, it seems like that was precisely what had happened here in America. Not since September 11, 2001, could I recall a unified cultural moment of crisis in which everything seemed to stop here in America. A moment when individuals were forced to reconcile their worldview with the world itself and realize that despite all material gains and life stations, they were powerless in the face of the cosmos. By all accounts, we’ve had it pretty good.

I had but a seed of a notion how fortunate we have been in that respect. I know that America has prospered despite a slew of injustices and dispossession the world over. Truly, the poorest among our number live as kings in the majority of the world, and even those from our recent past. We have had it exceedingly easy in this country, and most surely it has spoiled us.

Despite my platitudes and awareness of the trends of history, I had grown complacent: surely the good times would continue. Surely, not within my lifetime, would the world just stop spinning. Surely not. Yet, for the last two weeks, it seems like that is precisely what has been happening.

In retrospect, it was inevitable. A cursory glance at world history shows that our society’s prolonged relative peace, stability, and prosperity has been an exception, not the rule. Both secular sources, as well as the Bible’s descriptions of the course of human history are clear: human existence is fraught with plague, war, economic turmoil, and uncertainty. This is what happens in human history. This is what always happens. History is one long narrative of the human species struggling to gain some semblance of control over the world, and being put in its place over and over again.

This isn’t to say that I think we’re in some manner of cataclysm at the moment, in many ways I believe we’re overreacting. This virus is not Captain Trips, the superflu at the center of Stephen King’s The Stand that decimates 99% of the world population over the course of a few weeks. This virus is not the resurgent Black Death or anything approximating similar diseases in their scope. By all accounts, the preventative measures that we are taking should be an effective course of action to preserve the lives of those at risk within our communities. These preventative measures should work. What concerns me, however, is not the scope of the virus, but the effect on the populace and governing bodies. What concerns me is not nature, but the hearts of mankind.

I have found myself wavering between a quiet resolve and a deep existential angst over the course of the last week. In so many ways I feel as though my introspection and contemplations have prepared me to perform my job and support those around me during a time such as this. Not to put too fine a point on it, but dwelling my own mortality and smallness compared to God and the universe is more or less my default setting, the current moment in history is merely validation. I have labored for years, uncompensated financially, pursuing projects that have taught me the skills necessary to execute and distribute media content online on a tight delivery schedule. Working in a church media center, this is precisely what is needed.

My resolve comes from the fact that I have struggled in prayer and diligence to reconcile my calling with my current station in life, faced frustration with what I perceived to be professional stagnation, yet ultimately have found a deeper sense of calling in serving the Kingdom of God directly as part of a ministry team, and just in time to be mobilized in distributing ministering content to those in our church family and beyond. Speaking with my mentor earlier this week, I reflected that it is as though I have been created and placed for a time such as this, a deterministic conviction that squares with the deepest parts of my soul. Earlier this year, as I charted out my calendar in prayer, I had the striking conviction that my efforts to streamline my creative processes and work schedule had been in preparation for some shift.  I thought, surely that means that my creative projects will finally get their place in the sun! Surely.

Then the announcement of pandemic. The social distancing. The business closures.

I quite suspect that I’m now seeing that shift play out in real time, not at all in the manner that I had so vainly hoped.

So many that I know within the church have been praying for some manner of revival in the West. The unfortunate reality is that revivals, spiritual awakenings, and true conversions to the faith often come as a reaction to desperate circumstances, and that certainly seems to be the trajectory that we’re on now. I, overall, take great hope in this, because a cultural moment of discipline by the hand of God indicates that all is not lost, and that His patience has not worn out. There is still yet time to work towards Kingdom purposes in our world.

There are conversations to have with friends and family that could never have been had in a world with consistent market gains and certainty. There are examples to be made as we give of ourselves to serve those who cannot leave their homes. The world over, communities seem to be coming together in the face of uncertainty and slowing down, and perhaps looking up. Perhaps this pandemic and social distancing is precisely what we have needed spiritually. Perhaps it is a blessing in disguise.

 Yet, I confess existential angst as well. I suspected a market correction within the next year, I suspected more political turmoil, I suspected that housing prices would drop and that we might have a recession—I did not suspect that anything like COVID-19 and the ensuing market crash would happen. I was complacent. I was a fool.

As governments across the globe issue decrees, as death rates skyrocket overseas, as troops mobilize even in our nation to help slow the spread of the virus, as local stores shutter, as layoffs come, as markets tank, as the world slowly grinds to a halt, I confess that I am fearful. It is all-to-easy for me to speak about noble callings and the Lord providing opportunities to serve our communities while my hand is on the plow and my eyes are set on a goal, but each night, as I lay down to sleep, I am troubled by the uncertainty. I have absolutely no idea what the future holds, only that it’s a future that we all must partake in. Somehow, I will need to confront the struggles ahead. The potential of unemployment, the ramifications of an economic recession, the challenge of raising up a family in the face of it all. Maybe none of these things come to pass, but they are certainly on the table. I know, better now than in the past, just how blessed I have been, and that gives me hope, because my God remains the same though the seasons change.

I can thank God for His provision throughout the years. I can thank God for everything that He has done, from saving my soul to providing for my wedding, from growing my faith to bringing basic provision. God has been good, and I know that He is sovereign, even over this time.

With impeccably dark timing. My daily Bible reading has crossed into the territory of Jeremiah and Ezekiel and the Babylonian exile, a time of unprecedented tumult in Israel’s history as they were scattered to the nations. In that time, God did not call his remnant to look back upon where they had come and long for it—He lambasted the “feel-good-best-life-now,” false teachers that brought such messaging. Instead, God encourages His people to serve His purposes faithfully where they are in exile, accept their lot, and look towards His promises in a spirit of humble faithfulness:

The book of Jeremiah, chapter 29 verses 5-14 say:

Build houses and dwell in them. Plant gardens and eat their fruit. Take wives and father sons and daughters. Take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters. Multiply there, and don’t be diminished. Seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to God for it; for in its peace you will have peace.” For the God of Israel says: “Don’t let your prophets who are among you and your diviners deceive you. Don’t listen to your dreams which you cause to be dreamed. For they prophesy falsely to you in my name. I have not sent them,” says the Lord. For The Lord says, “After seventy years are accomplished for Babylon, I will visit you and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you,” says The Lord, “thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you hope and a future. You shall call on me, and you shall go and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You shall seek me, and find me, when you search for me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” says Yahweh, “and I will turn again your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places where I have driven you, says Yahweh. I will bring you again to the place from where I caused you to be carried away captive.”

This time will pass. There will be changes made to our lives overall, changes to the world and economy, there will be difficulties and uncertainties, but God is sovereign, and while we draw breath we are to be faithful in serving precisely where we have been placed. This is a time for heroes. This is a time to help those around us. This is a time to serve the city. This may be a time to isolate, but not in the manner of Prospero, drinking to his health in a raucous party as the Red Death devastated his country, and finally his own castle. We can maintain a healthy distance while making sure that we stay in touch with those around us.

We are not in control, and that is okay, because we have never been in control. We have always been operating at the good pleasure of a Sovereign God, and though we cannot see the grander picture from where we stand, we can be assured that He will bring His work to completion according to His will, and that we have the opportunity before us to put our money where our mouth is. 

I hope and pray that this blows over within a few weeks and that everything moves on, but I won’t act as though I believe that is the case. I certainly hope this is a footnote in history, but have to entertain the notion that this very well could be the type of cultural moment that is written up in history books that future generations look upon and marvel that anyone could have lived through it. Yet, those of us alive now are the end product of generations that have passed through storms far worse than the one before us, globally as well as within the church, and have marked the way with faithful witness of God’s provision and grace.

I recall Gandalf’s encouragement of Frodo, reminding him that no one seeks out times of trouble, but will be subjected to them all the same, before calling him to action to make the most of the time before him. This is such a time. A time for heroes, a time for action, a time for faith, and I hope and pray, a time for revival.

The post #17: A Time for Heroes appeared first on EXPATS OF EDEN.

Where Christ-followers fear to tread, darkness takes hold.

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I must confess that I have been putting this entry off. It’s been mostly written since 2016, but it never sat right with me to share it, even now. Truthfully, I expected my next entry in this series to be a borderline self-help rambling about “how to weather a spiritual desert,” never thinking for a moment that perhaps I might need to consult God in prayer before proceeding with a series overtly dedicated to Him. I confess arrogance in that respect. God saw to it that my mind be changed, as a month ago, just before setting out to write that episode, a disruption occurred. 

We interrupt our regularly scheduled program for a nightmare, and a look beyond the veil.

I had a nightmare in the early days of 2020.

Usually when these dreams come, I ignore them as they consist of reasonably terrifying scenarios: getting eaten by a shark, natural disasters, discovering that you’ve withheld too little money for your quarterly taxes—basic fears. This dream was different, however. It brought with it a lingering fear that demanded to be articulated.
    In the dream I was a teenager again, young and blind to the world. I was singing the song “Me and Bobby McGee” as I ran with a group of other teenagers as they made their way through the streets of a run-down city. Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t catch up with them, and despaired as I saw them shrink and fall between the cracks in the sidewalks and in between metal grates in dingy side alleys. 
    Somehow I passed beneath the grates and cracks myself, discovering the group once more in the ruins of a recreational center, where they had been waylaid at the entrance to a tennis court by a group of policemen who were intent on searching them for contraband. 
I approached the police, and they regarded me with tacit acceptance. Apparently, they considered me to be separate from my peers. I requested that the other teenagers be let go, to which the police assented on the condition that I surrender my own belongings and my clothing in exchange for the others’ freedom. 
As I considered, the other teenagers disappeared, and I was left standing naked in the Paris Island barracks from the film Full Metal Jacket as R Lee Ermy as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman berated me. Despite my obvious exposure and vulnerability in this moment, I gleefully began to mock the Sergeant to his face, raising the support of all of those around me. 
A bloated harlot of a woman emerged from the shadows beside me, also laughing, and the barracks melted away as we began to laugh and twirl around in circles, strange carnival music beginning to play all around us.
As I spun around, I saw around me a paradise in vivid, overbright technicolor, characteristic of a psychedelic experience. I saw friends from my early exiled years, and icons of those times and the culture that I once sought to emulate: Janice Joplin, Jim Morrison, and a myriad of flower children, all frolicking in a frenzied dance of joy and revelry. We laughed, we sang, and we danced beside a crystal lake and through green meadows to the idyllic backyards of classic post-war Americana.
We spun around and round as the years passed away, and  one-by-one these figures vanished until I was left in the empty living room of an old 1950s-era pre-fab house. 
At first, I thought I was alone, but soon saw that there was a teenager present. I approached the teenager, and he spun around aggressively, demanding that I stay away from him. I was taken aback, and inquired as to why he was so defensive. Hadn’t he seen the wild abandon and joyous celebration? Hadn’t he seen the freedom we all had in this place, freedom from fear or want? Freedom from judgment?
He shook his head in contempt. “I came here as a part of a history project, I came to see where she died.”
My eyes were opened to my surroundings.
This once-vibrant corner of the world had become grey and worn. Tendrils of black mold and unknown filth stained the walls, floors, and ceilings around me. The perfectly manicured lawns outside had given way to dirt lots. The fields and lakes: now a black-water swamp rife with cypress trees.
I looked for any sign of the others I had been with. There was no one to be found. In their stead I found scatterings of refuse and paraphernalia. Used, rusted needles and rubber hosing. Broken pipes. Spent condoms. 
I began to shake considering that the paradise I had been a part of, that seeming realization of pure liberty and freedom, had been little more than a skid-row. A den of addiction and degeneracy. 
“It’s pretty terrible, isn’t it?” The teenager said. I looked back to him and tried to explain that this was all a mistake, I wasn’t a part of this scene of rot and ruin. He smirked: “if you aren’t apart of this, then what are you doing here?” He turned away, and my eyes were open once more:
I saw myself: no longer a teenager, no not even a young man. Somehow time had escaped me and I was in the bloated, greying body of a man in his late-60s picking over the leavings of a misspent youth.
I looked and saw some of the friends that had vanished across the swamp attending a concert at a distant fairground. I knew in that moment that if I could escape from this place—so long as I did not set foot inside the fairground—I would be alright. 
The teenager’s words echoed through the air as I fled into the swamp to escape: “if you aren’t apart of this, then what are you doing here?” I saw a lantern light shine from between distant cypress knees.
I saw an old friend, emblematic of my life in exile, wearing a wide smile and a vacant stare, holding the lantern and wading through the swamp towards me.
“It’s time to go, Thorne,” he called out: “everyone is waiting for you. The concert is about to start.”
I stumbled in the muck, grabbing onto the exposed limb of a fallen tree. I yelled back dismissively, insisting that some things had come up and that I was no longer able to go along with the group. 
His face didn’t change. He stared through me with wide eyes and smiled on with his crazed grin. “It’s time to go, Thorne. Everyone is waiting for you. The concert is about to start.”
I repeated my protests, more desperately this time, as I tried to lift myself from the mud around me. I desperately grabbed for something to help steady myself, but found only branches snarled with poison ivy vines and wisps of Spanish Moss dangling from above.
“It’s time to go, Thorne. Everyone is waiting for you. The concert is about to start.”
I lost my footing and plunged into the mud.
Blinking past the grime I saw that he was now standing above me, grinning down fiercely, his face illuminated from beneath by the lantern that now lay in the muck at his feet. 
Vines wrapped around my body and in a flash I was bound and powerless. 
“I’ve got you!”
He began to laugh as something far away began to drag me breathless towards the fairground.
I cried for help. Once—how feeble we are in nightmares—a second time—this time I was sitting upright in bed, crying out into the darkness.
Somewhere in the night I thought I heard the whistling of the carnival tune… but alas it was but my wife’s breathing, wheezing because of the winter chill.

I couldn’t sleep for a long while. This dream needed parsing.

The imagery was familiar. It was a reminder of how I fell away from God, and how God brought me back. How I fell in the sense that I shunned my deepest held convictions in a frivolous quest for approval by my peers. At first I had rationalized my actions, insisting that it was simple altruism: the desire to maintain an open mind and empathize with others in spite of their readiness to abandon me or each other at the first sign of trouble.
Then, a niche as a journeyman: one willing to mock authority and convention for the sake of spectacle and cachet; a showman, a clown embarking on a fool’s dance into a world of reckless abandon.
I recognized the teenager that I had been, and the life that I had been leading within that dream. The ruin and decay at the tail end of it was most certainly the destination I had been headed for not seven years ago when God called me out of darkness back towards Himself. 
Seven years. Good Lord, I shudder to think how much damage I could have done to my life and mind had Christ not intervened. How much potential could have been lost? How many blessings foregone in the pursuit of pleasure? I don’t have to consider for long before the answers come to me: 
Friends and acquaintances from that time have borne examples of that hellish “could have been” life. Persistent fear and paranoia, financial ruin and despair, early graves so soon abandoned and overgrown. The lingering sense of loss of what could have been. 
A walk with Christ has removed me from those trails by necessity, removed me from those lives by force at times as the condemnation for my newfound path rang full and clear in my ears. The accusations of being a bigot, the vitriol at a moral stance misunderstood. The passive comments as though I were not present, the ceasing of calls and contact. The friendships grown cold. 
From time to time, I’ll hear a song from those days and the memories will come flooding back. The names and faces that marked a season of wandering and introspection. The searching out of self, that desperate desire to beat the wind, to live free as if there were no tomorrow. The sense of a tribe searched out and found… and lost once more.
There is a place in my heart that goes back to those strange trails far from the beaten road where time seemed to stretch on forever in a haze of reckless abandon. There is a lingering gloom and regret over that season, an ever-present duskiness that pervades the memories. I wonder that we did not perceive the darkness of the season for what it was, though perhaps it takes redeemed spiritual eyes to see.

Just a few weeks after this hellish vision of a life not lived, I woke up on a bleary Monday morning to find a message on my phone. There had been a death. A name from long ago. So long ago, that it took me a moment to process. 
Absent any details I wondered and prayed for God’s mercy.
In the back of my head, the music started to play, and I said with no hesitation, knowing full well the path that I was diverted from: “there, but for the grace of God, go I.”

—

Years ago, in a drunken state as I laid my head to rest, I had a moment of “the uncanny” where I felt as though I were no longer myself, and an internal compulsion posed a haunting question to me: “are you ready to meet God?”

    I lied to myself, ignoring my inebriation and the utter shame I was bringing upon myself: “Yes, yes I am.”

    I passed out.

    When I woke up in the morning, I learned that one of our modern gods had fallen; a man who could rightfully claim a spot as a cultural icon and wellspring of inspiration for generations of artists, succumbed to illness and passed away.
    I did some research, as I often do in the wake of a high-profile death, to see where he had placed his faith during life, and I saw a pattern that I have seen so many times echoed in celebrity memoirs, and heard from the lips of those I hold dear: a story of grappling for meaning in the face of a sure conviction that there was something grander beyond this sphere—a story of degradation transpiring in its pursuit—a story of dissatisfaction, and ultimately a looking back to the past and wondering where life had slipped through one’s proverbial fingers.
    This man had dabbled in Buddhism, Nihilism, Satanism, and Christianity, before concluding later in life that he knew that he could not claim to be a “full atheist”, but said of the question of God, “don’t even pose it to me”.  By this writing, there seems to be no indication that he ever truly addressed that question or realized an answer.
    The implications of this should shake each and every one of us to the core; because this was a man who had attained everything that our world tells us that we should want—and he died still searching for that inexplicable last piece that would have made the entire puzzle make sense.
    I am a filmmaker, and that means that I’m a student of pop-culture, for better or for worse. In my studies I have pored over the lives of the “big people” throughout history—the veritable movers and shakers—and I have found that this pattern of “searching in the face of deep existential angst, but never finding,” repeats itself time and time again.  Errol Flynn comes to mind.
    For the uninitiated, Errol Flynn is best remembered as Robin Hood, a heroic and romantic swashbuckler of the silver screen who starred in countless films over his storied career. Of course, his onscreen character posed a stark contrast to his actual life—he was a drunk, an addict, and a womanizer with a career of philandering so storied that his sexual escapades gave rise to a modern colloquialism—however crass, it is now a common utterance in many different social scenarios—“in like Flynn”.
    The man bragged and boasted about his Wicked, Wicked Ways (the settled title of his autobiography, as the publisher would not allow for it to be titled In Like Me) but those who knew him best, and indeed those who partook in the reading of his memoirs reflected that he was a deeply troubled man grappling for purpose in all the wrong places.  What’s more tragic—he knew it.
    He knew he was looking for something deeper.  He knew there was something more—and yet, he forewent the numerous “come to Jesus” rock bottom moments in his life (including statutory rape charges that shipwrecked his entire career) until he finally lapsed into legend.
    More recently, a well-known stuntman famous for his work on a prank television series—deeply troubled; deeply depressed; searching for purpose and never finding it—killed himself and a passenger after driving his luxury sports car, drunk, at 130 miles per hour off the road into a tree. In the years leading up to his death, it seems like he was also afforded those “come to Jesus” sort of rock bottom moments as well.
    I wonder, in my heart of hearts, if these men were ready to “meet God”. The answer is not mine to judge; merely to ponder and posit an educated, scripturally-based “hard-truth” guess: “probably not.”
    This is a tough subject to approach, but it’s one that eats at me day by day. I know that I have been at parties with people that will wind up being as well known as any of these men. I have counted them amongst my colleagues, coworkers, and friends.  I have, time and time again, attempted to be an ambassador for the Kingdom of God. Time and time again, more than I would ever like to admit, it’s fallen on deaf ears and in many ways I know that I have failed due to my own lifestyle and hypocrisy.
    I can’t just ignore it. The industry that I have been lead to is replete with these stories—I recently discovered that a well-known mogul claims to be an atheist, but believes in “divine inspiration” and that it “troubles him.”  Anyone who has followed his career, even from a superficial level, could plainly see that his work is anything BUT Godly. There were moments, early on, where it seemed like he was moving towards something truly divine, but upon seeing his latest film, I wanted to vomit at how divorced the soul of his work—and any artist’s work is an expression of the artist’s soul—is from anything good; and it just keeps getting worse.
When I first wrote this entry, it was 2016, a year before the “Me Too” movement would blow the lid off of the rampant degeneracy and abuse infesting the American film industry. How long had it persisted? The more that I learn, the more I realize that it’s been a feature, not a bug, of the major players since well before the introduction of sound to motion pictures. Like any human institution, corruption has been rife and taken root where good men have refused to take a stand.
    This pattern is observable all throughout the world—not merely amongst the “big people”. The “big people” are merely symptomatic of a larger problem. There are people who are going to Hell walking amongst us every single day, and I used to be among their number. 
I was walking that path. I was ignoring the chances for redemption. I was grieving the Spirit. By the grace of God alone, in 2013, after I completed my first feature-length film—a realization of a long-standing personal dream—God left me bedridden for nearly three months before lifting me up, by His grace alone, and setting me back on course.
    Spiritual warfare is a real concern; and, as Christians, we are to be soldiers in the cause. We’re supposed to fight. Why else is our Holy Book rife with images and metaphors for war? The bulk of the Old Testament pertaining to the conquest of Canaan could be viewed as a reflection of the Christian life in that respect, only that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the forces of darkness of this world. No matter where we are, we are on the battlefield—never safe on this side of Glory to disrobe the spiritual armor we are advised to put on.
    The problem I’m faced with is this—I don’t want any part of the industry that I have been called to. The culture surrounding it is corrosive, steeped in hedonism and spiritual darkness. Even still, I feel called to do battle there. I still have friends—very dear friends—who LOVE the culture and are actively chasing those dragons. What do I do?
    What are any of us to do?  What does it mean to be “in the world, but not of the world?” It’s this nagging splinter in my heart that I grapple with daily as I realize, more and more, that I don’t want to be a part of things the way that they are, but instead want to see them transformed.
    I see the “gods” of our age—celebrities—grappling with and reveling in addiction—and wonder why our culture elevates such people to such a lofty status?   We are rewarding behavior that we would recoil in horror from if they were to be found in ourselves, our families, our friends—our children—but every movie ticket we pay for, every CD we buy, every time we expend our money to consume something—we are giving tacit approval to the gods of “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll”.
    A few years ago, I met with a friend of mine who has been given a tremendous blessing—he’s “in like Flynn”—rubbing shoulders with really “big people” in his business. You’ve seen their work, you LIKE their work if the trades’ reports on critical scores are accurate, but the life they lead behind-the-scenes reads like the memoirs of a kid who burned out in college—only these aren’t average folks living average burnout stories. These are the “big people,” and the “big people” have the money to buy the “REALLY good” drugs and burnout on a global stage.
    I listened, I smiled, I said, “wow, that’s great, your career’s really taking off,” but inside my heart was breaking. This young man, whose heart used to be on fire for God was now gloriously recounting how he orchestrated a drug-fueled bender and sexual liaisons for dozens of A-list celebrities. What was I to say? Anything at all would have been preferable to what seems like the common default: a passive shrug and declaration of “different strokes for different folks.”
    I’m no better. Time and time again when I’ve touched that world, even for a moment, I’ve walked away corrupted and in desperate need of repair. Every time though, the Lord has been gracious and fixed me. This is what terrifies me about the fact that I feel called to be a filmmaker—how do I escape such degradation?
    My social network includes producers, actors, directors, writers—unknown and known, some you’ve seen on TV—I’m in this place where I’m in total exile and too suspicious of myself to know how to proceed.

I think of one of my personal heroes: Alice Cooper.

    Alice Cooper (his real legal name since 1975) used to sell out concerts at stadiums in the 70s.  He was the Marilyn Manson of that decade. He personally knew the legends of that time—Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison—and was close friends with Groucho Marx, Peter Sellers, and counted Salvador Dali and John Lennon among his celebrity fans. He also spent the 1970s drunk; rarely eating, and would start each day with a beer and began drinking hard liquor before lunch time.  This problem was addressed but recurred until it spiraled into hard drugs in the early 1980s. A few of his albums, all successful, he barely remembers writing or recording. Eventually, his marriage fell apart and he committed to saving it through Christian Counseling and rehab.
    Alice now relates a miraculous tale about how he walked out of rehab and felt like a new person—like he was never an alcoholic, and never would be again.  It’s not surprising to find out that it was around this time that he committed his life to Christ and became a born-again Christian. Unlike many celebrities, this new religious affiliation stuck like super glue.
    Concerned he could no longer be a rock star AND a Christian, he consulted with his pastor who gave him some encouragement: that God had placed him in the Philistine’s camp; that his lifestyle—now clean—spoke infinitely more than any mere proselytizing could in the world of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll.
    Alice Cooper continues to rock and record, and does it in the name of winning ground for the Kingdom of God.
    In reviewing Alice’s life, it’s clear that God gave him a lot of second chances, a lot of rock bottom moments where his life was spared (before the final one that saved his soul), and now the man is a faithful witness and one of the last living legends we have among us.
    Even if he’s in the minority, I think the few stories like his are the ones that really count.  The Kingdom of God is, after all, like a mustard seed. I take a great deal of hope in that.

Thankfully in the years since I originally wrote this, my network has shifted and I’m seeing more of God’s impact on the industry and world around me, but there is still so much to be done. 

So long as I’m living my work must continue.


I think back to 2016, and realize that I’ve tread this ground before. I’m again at the end of what I have to offer God. I’m outside the bounds of skills professionally, needing to learn more in order to keep up, I’m outside the bounds socially, now being pushed outside of my comfort zone as I realize the tremendous importance of investing in others. In 2016, when I was similarly at the end of myself, I was convicted to “wait and rest” in God. This time, I know that “waiting and resting” does not preclude action in what God has given. I can be faithful with what is before me, strengthening my skills professionally, socially, emotionally, and spiritually, for the path ahead.

That is all anyone can do. Lean on God and press onward.

Back to the present. That text message on my phone announcing the death of someone from my past life. I offered my condolences how I could, then repeated the mantra, “there but for the grace of God go I,” and went about my day, concerned, but refusing to be interrupted.
God had other plans. By the end of the week, I was called to “go and see, the place where they died,” and revisit those forgotten trails. Those who know the events of that weekend know what happened. I have been convicted of pride and arrogance and will not speak of what took place. I will, however, give my assent that there is indeed much work to be done, and I have the lingering conviction that God called me out of deep darkness to return seven years later with a lantern and a rope, as well as  the mission to be salt and light where both are desperately lacking.

For so many years I looked back upon my life with disdain, isolating myself from the industry and culture that I have been called to. I can no longer ignore, however, the truth that Christ did not come to save the righteous, but to call the unrighteous, and while I still sinned, He called to me.

Where Christ-followers fear to tread, darkness takes hold. Complacency is the path to damnation, not for the Christian, but for the world that they forsake.

At this juncture, at least, my eyes are open to that, and I must answer the call set before me. 


But before we part, I must ask you: where have you been called, and how will you respond?

The post #16: There But For the Grace of God appeared first on EXPATS OF EDEN.

When crossing a spiritual desert, there is seemingly little of more importance than simple forward momentum.

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Hours turn to days, to weeks, to months, and here we are, a year since we began this walk, you and I. What has changed since we last spoke? What vestige of old life have you dropped, and what new affectations have you collected? Has it been for the best?
I suppose that is the only truly healthy way to compare oneself—the comparison against one’s own growth or stagnation. My old pastor used to say that in order to chart one’s growth, one must ask whether or not they are more like Christ now than they were a year ago, bearing in mind that there is no true stagnation in life, spiritual or otherwise. 
You are either moving up the mountain, or slowly slipping down the slope. To put it another way, “you’re either green and growing, or ripe and rotting.” Thank you, Mr. Kroc.
    As I look back at the last year, I ask myself: “which is it? Have you crossed the desert? Have you summitted another spiritual peak?”
    Maybe. Time will tell whether or not my current perception of things holds up.
    There have certainly been victories, but any great stride now may seem like child’s play to the man I might be in another year’s time, and even so, any stride is reflective not of my own strength or wit, but instead of God’s grace and targeted influence over the strange movements of my heart. 
    I will not boast in myself, but that God has been faithful even when I have not, and I will take solace that despite my flesh’s best efforts to stand still and slip away, He bade me forward, one step at a time. 
It has been over four years since that fateful summer when I felt so close to His will for my life, and the words echo in my memory from the dreams of that time: “this land was cleared for war.” God help me that it took so long for me to actually listen and heed what He had for me. I know that the past is firmly set, but I still consider the fact that He had set me up to marry Rebekah, something that I would have begun to pursue had my heart not been bent towards its own selfish means. Yet, on the other hand, the Lord used that season of wandering to further burn dross to equip me for the future. So, too, has the last few years been a season of wandering to an extent. 
When last I left this narrative, I was resigned to the fact that while things were moving in a positive direction, I was nevertheless in a spiritual desert of sorts.     Reflecting on the desert, I see that there was much within my ability to control the entire time. Reflecting on my perceived helplessness, I realize that it was self-imposed because I was not taking charge of what was actually within my control. I felt my time slipping away from me, but had never taken an honest look at what that time actually meant, nor how much of it there actually was. I was all-too focused on the fact that there were problems occurring, deserts to cross, one step to take after another. Too self-consumed to actually step back and realize that none of these things happen in a vacuum.
When crossing a desert, there is little of more importance than simple forward momentum. To be sure, as opportunities arise, you take them as you are able, but there is a general lack of zeal that resonates through everything. “Get it over and done with,” seems to be the prime directive as the hours slip away, and boy do they slip. There never seems to be time enough for what you wish to accomplish, and when the time is found, you have forgotten what it was you wanted to do, or have pushed on so hard that you’re absolutely exhausted. What a way to go through life, right? Bouncing between burnout and boreout with little space in between in a desperate bid to get to the next deadline, only to find that with one project’s completion comes a void of idle living and the incessant nagging at your mind that you ought to be up to something… and the cycle repeats. On to the next.
You know, I lived in that cycle for the last five years of my life at least. The spiritual desert just made it plain that something was wrong, and provided the routine I needed to put some control-variables in place and see where the system was breaking down. Why wasn’t I able to accomplish what I had in mind despite my relative industriousness? Why were my projects stagnating despite what seemed like constant effort exerted? Why was I being swept away by the waves of time instead of riding them as I had when I was younger? Why were my wheels spinning with no forward momentum? Why was I so miserable?
In May of 2019, I reached my limit and finally broke. Over the preceding 8-months I had shouldered an increasing number of responsibilities while simultaneously staving off relaxation of any type in favor of a constant attitude of hustle. The word “no” was not in my vocabulary, except when it came to taking it easy. “There would be time enough to take it easy when I ‘make it,’” I insisted. Time enough to have a Sabbath day of rest. Time enough to go visit the family more than once a quarter. Time enough to eat a meal at the table instead of at the desk. Time enough to be a well-rounded human being.
I very much suspect now that the “time enough” would never have come given my trajectory. There would always be another excuse, another task to perform, another hoop to jump through over and over again until a heart attack or other illness born out of such a lifestyle took me at an early age. Another statistic. Another casualty lying at the feet of Mammon.
Thank God I broke when I did. Frustrated with this general phenomenon of my time slipping away from me, I posed the question to myself: was this a “me problem” or a larger environmental concern?
The answer, I discovered, was complicated.
Do you know how many hours are in a week? 168. I know, I’ve counted. Struck by the notion that I first and foremost had a general sense that things were not OK, but no data to draw from, I set out to track every hour of my week in 30-minute increments. I wanted to know, precisely, where my time was going. I settled on a customized spreadsheet and color-coded labeling system that categorized my life between sleep, salaried work, self-betterment in the form of exercise, family interactions, social interactions, monetarily-driven projects, strictly passion-projects, religious commitments between church and participation in a regular Bible study, general freelance hours, and finally, wasted time. Each 30-minute block of time was labeled and coded based on the predominate activities within that period of time, with a running tally of hours dedicated to each category along with an accompanying pie chart and percentage score attached. Finally, I added a general “Mood” score to indicate how I felt at the end of the week.
From the last week of May into the Fall I gathered my data, recognizing the trend that I had been experiencing playing out before me in spreadsheets and numbers. Burn-out, bore-out. Elation, misery… stagnation. 
I was amazed to discover that my general feelings of restfulness were not correlated to actual time spent asleep, nor work performed. One week, labeled “on fire by Sunday night,” had 49 hours of work logged across all areas, but only 46 hours of sleep (roughly 6.57 hours per night) logged, while another week labeled “angry and burned out,” logged 43 hours of total work across all areas and a whopping 57 hours of sleep, or a solid 8.14 hours a night.
Where was the disconnect?
It wasn’t until November that I started to make a bit more sense of things. I reviewed my now several months worth of data, and something struck me. Weeks in which I had a dismal outlook on the world coincided with a few different things: a lack of planning coupled with excess free time, a prolonged period (several weeks or more) of diminished relaxation or time away from work or “obligatory” social engagements, and a failure to recharge at the end of the week in order to prepare for the week ahead. 
I was living “koyaanisqatsi,” a Hopi Indian word for “life out of balance.” Put more simply: I sucked at time management. While I was certainly able to function, my new routine had reached the end of my powers of improvisation. While five years ago, I may have been able to “play Jazz” with my schedule, allowing for my mindset to flit freely between a handful of different projects or obligations and efficiently execute them even while circumstances shifted, my life had changed in the intervening years, and I had done a poor job of managing my household.
I no longer had just short-term projects and myself contend with. I was looking at long-term projects, the development of business strategies, release schedules, a growing social network, and, most importantly, my wife to care for. My tendency to “say yes” to everything had resulted in a chaotic schedule in which I was unable to process through my obligations and create definitive plans of action on the fly. Any single “good” or “bad” week was purely accidental. It was the result of time making itself available to me, and not the other way around. I was not happening to life, life was happening to me. I would hustle when it was time to hustle, but the moment that a free moment made itself apparent, a moment in which I could direct my attention to an important, non-urgent task (thank you Stephen Covey), my mind would draw a blank, because I had never considered that I would have had the time to focus in such a way. This lack of planning was killing me.
A clear example of this came in the form of several weeks which I had labeled as “angry and burned out.” These weeks, I found, featured a great deal of wasted time. The amount of time varied, but usually clocked in somewhere around 4-5 hours across the whole week. The reason behind the waste, however, was always a variation of the same lament: “Unsure where to start. Gridlocked. No plan of action.” I simply didn’t know what to do with myself in those moments, and by the time that I had figured it out, another urgent task would present itself, and it was on to the next. Rinse and repeat. Burn out. Bore out.
I needed to learn to plan ahead. To set my mind on the time available and be prepared for when moments presented themselves in which I might make progress on projects that I deeply cared about. I needed to be proactive, not reactive.
This was only one part of my problem, however.
I had a dream a few weeks ago, at the tail end of 2019. It consisted of me languishing in a stormy ocean, desperately trying to fight back against the waves that insisted on driving me to the shore. As I languished, a surfer cruised by, riding along the waves with ease, and a definite swagger. It struck me that this was the perfect illustration of how I had been living my life. I was attempting to fight against forces of nature that I had no control over, instead of managing my means of harnessing those forces to propel me forward. I was exhausting myself in a desperate, futile, bid at control, instead of focusing on my sphere of influence (again, thank you Mr Covey). I hadn’t realized how exhausted I had become until just after the New Year, when I found myself sitting at the window of a local Chick Fil A drive-thru, having sat through the full line during the breakfast rush, and realizing that I had been so “in my head” that I had forgotten to place an order.
No more.
2020 had come, and with it came a break.
The second week in January, I took my first honest vacation in over two years. I say “honest vacation,” because any time I had taken off of work in the past had usually been taken in the spirit of getting more time to do things that needed to be done, all the while checking in sporadically to see what I was missing at the office. During this week in January, however, I didn’t check my email, I didn’t check my phone, and I didn’t make any attempt to devote some time to my passion projects. Beyond basic household chores, I simply allowed for my mind to relax and decompress.
The results were startling. I found myself picking out the knots in certain projects that I had been trying to work out for months in 2019. Now, without any effort, but merely a relaxed mind, they were coming undone, and my mind began to free up in general.
I found myself journaling more. I found myself able to concentrate more. I found myself feeling happier. I found myself able to confront what would have been unbelievably stressful social situations without a moment’s hesitation. I found myself, likewise, able to actually spend time in prayer and focus on the task at hand instead of my mind wandering. And, particularly shocking, I found myself no longer drifting towards negative coping skills like alcohol and overeating. I had taken the time to rest, and consequently, found myself all the more aware, creative, productive, and emotionally stable going back to the office. Go figure, right?
I have learned another “law of the wild,” it is far better to rest occasionally than to burn out constantly.
As a consequence of all of this, I’m pleased and blessed to say that it appears that that the desert I had wandered in has passed. There is an overwhelming sense that God has removed a knot from my heart in order to place me where he wants me so that His true purpose for my life can be enacted, and for that I am grateful. I had forgotten what a season outside of a spiritual desert could be like, how the day to day patterns of life seem to bend towards a greater purpose, how scripture comes alive, how the spirit can be at peace and assured of its trajectory.
I have been realizing more deeply the ramifications of the marriage covenant. Come what may, the Lord has entrusted me with Rebekah’s heart and life, and the hearts and lives of our children. There is no more consideration of myself when contemplating the future, but instead the whole of our family. It is a curious development, as I had never given a great deal of consideration to my mortality prior to being married. I had no qualms about drinking in excess from time to time, smoking, speeding on the highway, getting little sleep, getting less exercise, eating poorly, and the whole myriad of ways that human beings can efficiently subtract days from our number. Now that I am married, however, I have a lingering conviction that anything that I do to negatively impact my health will ripple throughout the lives of my wife and our future children. It is a deeply strange thing to consider that I had not properly considered caring for myself on such a level until I was caring for another human, but such is the case.
It’s damning, but well worth considering, that the “desert” I had been wandering in, had been created and maintained by my own hand. Each misplaced priority another bucketful of sand to a desolate landscape. I believe I had the persistent habit of grieving the Holy Spirit by my actions with sin I knew about and nurtured for years, all the while writing off my vices as a way to cope with reality. “Someday, I’ll take it easy,” that’s what I told myself.
    Yet, even in the midst of all of that, God set things firmly upon my heart as actionable: to get in community, to leave my freelance business, to get married, to move to a different church. Then, finally, in a confluence of these various pieces, He finally dealt a killing blow to that area in my heart so that I would make a change willingly and not in bitterness. It was as if I had zero coping skills apart from my sin, and God placed the skills into my life systematically before dealing a killing blow to my negative coping strategies.
“Someday, I’ll take it easy,” well, that “someday” has finally come, but voluntarily, not some blue-sky “better life” or state of plenty that removes all stress. “Someday” has come because it must. It is what God has called me to. Out of darkness and into light. Out of the desert and into… somewhere. The trail stretches out before me, and I frankly am unsure of where it leads. I have some inklings in my heart and soul, some definite plans of action, but how this story plays out is entirely out of my hands. What is within my power, however, is to plan ahead. Life is long, and I know that it is likely that I will stumble across another desert, or several, before the end of it.
    What can be done?

The post #15: Out of the Desert appeared first on EXPATS OF EDEN.

What if, every day for the next year, you woke up with the perfect Christmas mindset, excited to begin the day, come what may?

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As the holiday season descended this year, I made it a point to grab hold of the reason behind it and truly partake and enjoy the holidays. “There’s no way,” I told myself, “that I’m having another year where I ‘miss Christmas’.” I look back on the last month and I realize that I succeeded. I did not “miss Christmas” this year, but instead thoroughly experienced it—the good and the bad. There were plenty of laughs and lighthearted moments with family, memories made, traditions created or upheld, Christ glorified in worship and contemplation, spiritual highs, deep prayers…and likewise tears of pain. Pain at hearing of a terminal diagnosis and the lost time and opportunity that such things portend, pain at learning of those around us who were suffering whom we were powerless to help, pain at seeing the fallen state of the world contrasted against the colorful lights that mark this season. 
Stark reminders that despite how glorious a season that it can be, it is at its heart a commemoration of a desperate pregnant couple trying to find shelter for the night as their child is born…and then the celebration of the birth itself and the kingdom that was sure to come. We often miss that, though: that there is a great deal of suffering to be had in advance of the Kingdom of God. We are, after all, exiled here on this fallen planet, and our holiday bliss is but a diversion from that. Far be it for me to condemn the festival bliss after my thorough glutting, however, I will do no such thing. 
For even if there is discrepancy, even if the hymn’s proclamations that “all is calm, all is bright,” does not currently reflect reality, the words of another hymn ring out, “God is not dead, nor doth He sleep,” and I remember the words of Fred, Ebeneezer Scrooge’s nephew, in A Christmas Carol, “though [Christmas] has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”
I’ll take that one step farther. I’d like, in the next year and years to come, to make a practice of celebrating Christmas each and every day. 

I’ve never been good at wrapping presents, not until this year that is, though I still don’t think that my skills are anything to write home about. The switch came at a family  birthday party early in December when the Winter family’s collective skills were on display and it dawned on me that I really, really sucked at wrapping to the point that my family members always knew which presents I had gifted based on the wrapping alone. This, I decided, was unacceptable, and I set forth to better myself.
With a great deal of practice as well as emotional support from my wife, I was, by the holiday proper, able to wrap a gift that was virtually indistinguishable from everyone else’s, except for, perhaps, the added flair of the ribbons and bows that I began to add to my gifts in an attempt to stretch my talents that much more. It was Christmas, after all, and I wanted to be jolly.
Throughout this process, I began to contemplate the very nature of gift giving, and felt rightly embarrassed by my past gifts and their slap-dash “get it done” style of wrapping. While the contents of a package may be the gift proper, the wrapping tells a story all its own. Certainly the paper is torn away in a fraction of the time that it took to set it in place, but that ephemeral nature of the wrapping itself is just an extra way of communicating to the recipient that they matter, and that you took the time to do things correctly.
Consider the well-wrapped Christmas present: it is placed in a box or other container that somehow conceals its true nature. If it is light in weight, perhaps an object is added to the parcel to disguise that aspect as well. It is meticulously wrapped, each fold calculated and carefully laid into place. The entire package is deliberately crafted with presentation in mind, created to be destroyed in but an instant: in an exhilarating rush of anticipation to discover the contents. And then?
Surprise? Joy? Wonder? My wife seems to have mastered the ability to get those reactions from me with her gifts. Seeing that reaction on her face, or on the face of another loved one makes me consider how God must have felt seeing Adam take his first steps into Eden. Likewise watching a loved one try something out for the first time, particularly if the loved one is a child: how must God have felt knowing the joys that reality contained, and seeing His children go out and experience it?
What about the opposite emotions? The disappointment? The feigned excitement or gratitude? What about the confusion at a gift that has no readily apparent purpose? I’m sure we’ve all had that experience at one time or another. I can certainly say that in many of those instances, however, the real utility or thought behind such gifts have become apparent as time went on. I’m sure that God has given us all gifts like this, ones that we are unable to appreciate or see the use of in the moment: spiritual deserts that seem unending but hold opportunities for growth and transcendence. Shoddily-wrapped seasons of melancholy that burn off the dross of our hearts to make us more like Christ. Disappointments, ornately decorated boxes with nothing inside that make us reconsider whether our priorities are rightly placed to begin with.
What kinds of gifts are we to those around us? How often do we have the means by which another might be delivered from some hardship, but we do not offer it? Something that I realized over the course of this holiday season is that opportunities to be a gift to other people are a dime a dozen, it is just that the Christmas Season makes them all the more apparent. Moments of felt need are much more noticeable when all around is “cheery and bright.” I wonder how many of these moments I don’t notice during the year because my mind is on the path ahead instead of the world around. I wonder how many I flatly ignore.
I wonder at the number of times that I have withheld grace from others, focused too much on my own pride and satisfaction instead of the circumstances, whatever they be, that has lead to an unpleasant encounter.
A refrain I found myself uttering over and over again throughout the month of December, and particularly the week of Christmas itself was “it’s Christmas!” In excitement at times, yes, but also as a way of shrugging off a perceived slight or  defusing an argument. “It’s Christmas,” had a way of making the world seem a little brighter, and lightening my heart just enough to remain charitable to those around me even if internally I was seething. 
With that refrain, I mosied through the holidays with glee, though this year was  actually the busiest I’ve ever had. It didn’t matter what responsibilities, hustle and bustle, or obligations were on the table. It didn’t matter the workload or stress levels. “It’s Christmas,” and so it goes, no harm, no foul.
In the midst of all of this, I realized that one best experiences the joy of Christmas by helping others to experience the joy of Christmas. By realizing your role as a gift to others as a disciple of Christ. As God brought his son into the world as a free gift to humanity, one must follow in His stead and become a free gift to humanity, and therein discover the joy of the Christmas season. 
And how joyous a season it was: the best in a long time. There were moments throughout the season wherein Heaven and Earth seemed to intersect, where the hopes of the best Christmas carols rhymed with reality. I’m honestly not sure that mankind can sustain such joy in our present fallen state. We must cherish the moments that we do have, because they are foretastes of Heaven, and they always end. Just as Christmas ended, bringing with it a lingering sadness, because, just like my wedding, it was so wonderful that it made everything else seem lessened by comparison.
Dopamine crashes are a hell of a thing.
In the wake of the holiday, reality sets in. That there were relatives at the celebration who would likely not be alive next year, and that the time to invest in those relationships had slipped away, week after week, excuse after excuse. That there were likewise relatives present who, while not terminal, did show signs of age for the first time in your mind. Where had the time gone? The grim notion dawns that someday, you too will share their fate, and a new cast of characters will rise up to replace you. Good Lord, it’s the end of the year… January’s upon us. What is there to look forward to in January, or February for that matter? I’ve got to wait until next December to feel this all over again?
No, you don’t.
Because Christmas is just an excuse to be charitable, to be a gift, to get to know Christ more, to spend time with family, and invest in those around you. It’s an opportunity that we’ve made it extremely convenient to take advantage of because the whole world seems to stop the week that it comes around. There’s nothing special about the day itself. It has a sunrise and a sunset, weather patterns are what they are. The only thing different is that we treat it differently.
We celebrate the coming of Christ, the salvation of mankind, we proclaim cries for peace on Earth and good will to men (provided we’re not in traffic over the holidays), we adorn our homes in glittering lights, give gifts to one another, and allow ourselves to be given to festival bliss. But all of this holiday cheer and festive joy is but a scant reflection of Heaven and God’s glory, and there will be a day on which that joy will never end and the holiday will continue forever. For the professing Christian, however, that holiday can begin now. Because Christmas is just the beginning. It’s the coming of the Lord, and the beginning of Heaven on Earth. And that’s why we shouldn’t be sad about Christmas being over—if we’re truly celebrating, we will carry it on into the year ahead. 
    What if, every day for the next year, you woke up with the perfect Christmas mindset, excited to begin the day, come what may? What if you made the time to see that family member that’s on your heart, to reach out to that friend that you know is struggling? What if you asked yourself, every day, “whom can I bless today? What gift can I give?” What if you started each day with that cry in your heart, “it’s Christmas!” What if, when given the opportunity to be bitter, you instead proclaimed, “it’s Christmas,” and let the offense slide away? What if you kept the spirit alive until next December? How wonderful of a year could you have? How much a blessing could you be to those around you?
    I confess, I’m writing this on December 29, and despite trying to keep this up for even a week, I’ve found myself stumbling. It’s not that easy to do, but I know it’s possible. I missed Christmas last year and the year before, and blamed it on my job, my schedule, everything but myself. This year, I told myself that I was going to capture the spirit of Christmas, and told myself almost every single day, “It’s Christmas,” for an entire month, and despite my schedule being busier than ever, I found that Christmas joy. 
I want to try this crazy challenge. I want to live every day in the spirit of Christmas, being deliberate to consider how I can use my time, talent, and treasures in the new year. Try to ask myself each day, the questions that have been hanging on my heart: what shall I do now? To whom can I be a gift?

    Try it with me.

The post #14: Everyday Christmas appeared first on EXPATS OF EDEN.

Some brief thoughts and considerations on Christmas, Christ, and recapturing the spirit of the season.

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Two years ago, I moved out of the private sector as an independent contractor to work in at a church. Where in the past my client work may have simply wound down at the close of the year, affording a large amount of empty space with which to reflect, my Novembers and Decembers became a frenzied blur of preparation for one of the church’s biggest events: Christmas Eve, when our attendance numbers multiply several times over for one glorious night as the churched and unchurched alike gather together to acknowledge that something unique is being celebrated.

I confess that for the last two years I have missed Christmas, the holidays becoming something to endure and “get through” rather than a time of festival joy and honest reflection on the “reason for the season.”
Much has changed within my heart over the last few months, which will be the subject of our next episode, but as Christmas is upon us once again, I wanted to take a moment to re-orient—to refocus my heart on God and the endeavor to live as an exile in this world. 
I am determined not to let Christmas pass by without truly imbibing in the season and its meaning. The coming of the King, the birth of Christ—God become flesh. The ultimate tale of exile: that one so Holy would condescend to a fallen world to be the sole shining light of hope, bearing up the consequence of the darkness, and spreading the truth so that that singular light might spread across the world, re-orienting our eyes heavenward in hope and wonder at what as been done on our behalf though we deserve it not.
—

In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God, and Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

In him was life, and that life was the light of men.
We were created in the image of God, holy and pure in his sight. He gave us the world and its fruit as gifts, and the care of the world as a job. He walked with us and talked with us, we knew him face to face.
Yet amidst all of these blessings, there was one fruit forbidden to us. “If you eat it,” God said, “you will surely die.”
Even so, we took the fruit, and ate it.
And with that, our fate was sealed.
We were cursed, broken, fallen, and driven away from God’s presence, doomed to wander a world no longer within our control- our hearts giving way to deeper sin and darkness.
Born into sin and cursed unto death, no one on earth can save us.
But God had other plans.
He promised that someday there would come a man who would undo this curse and save mankind.

And thus we watched, and waited for the coming of the Messiah who would deliver us from darkness.
“In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit.” – The Book of Judges
The days turned to years, and the years turned to centuries- and human life continued down the cursed path we had brought upon ourselves.

But in his grace, God set apart a people through which he would save the world, God built a mighty nation, providing for, prospering, and leading them into the promised land.
But their hearts were fickle, and they quickly turned away.
Yet despite it all, God set apart a royal lineage through King David, through whom the messiah was promised to be born and rule over the earth.
But we did not want God’s chosen king. Though his prophets warned us, we would not listen.
And so we continued down the path we had chosen, suffering exile again and again.
But even in this, while we were still sinners, God remembered his promise to save us, and set apart a remnant for himself whose knees had never bowed before any idol.
And so it was, in the days of Caesar Augustus, ruler of the Roman Empire, that the Messiah would finally come.



Hear the words of the prophet Isaiah concerning the coming of the Messiah:
“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.”
In the time of Herod, king of Judea, there lived a woman named Mary. She was a virgin, pledged to be wed to a carpenter named Joseph.
Before they could be married, God sent the angel Gabriel to Mary to deliver a message:
“You have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.”
Through the years of exile, David’s line had continued.
The throne of Israel was empty, but there was always a living heir.
And so it was that Joseph, Mary’s husband took his pregnant bride with him to Bethlehem, the city of David, his homeland, where his son, the heir to the throne of Israel, would be born.

“Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the
Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
Upon arrival to Bethlehem, it was time for Jesus to be born. But there was no room for the pregnant couple to stay at the inns in town.
Instead, Mary and Joseph were shown a stable- a home for the lowliest of animals. This was to be their lodging.
And it was in this most humble of places. That the Lord became flesh and came into the world.
No fanfare heralded his coming, the sole witnesses were his parents, and the beasts of burden that shared the stable.
But where man had failed to welcome the messiah, God once again had other plans.
He sent angels to announce the birth to a group of shepherds in the hills outside of Bethlehem. He placed a star in the sky that wise men from the East followed to Bethlehem, where they offered their gifts to a newborn king.
And so they went to worship and adore the baby Jesus, who would come to be known as “The Good Shepherd,” and the “King of Kings and the Lord of Lords”.
There, beneath the skies of Bethlehem, the messiah was born, and heralded into this world by the most unlikely of people.
Jesus grew into adulthood, growing in favor with both God and man. He called all who heard him preach to repentance and dedication to God.
He taught that he alone was the path to salvation:
“I am the way the truth and the life… believe in me.”

He performed miracles and healings, showing his power over the natural world.
He was tempted to sin like every one of us, but unlike us, never succumbed to the temptation.
He opened his heart and arms wide for those whom society had cast away, choosing not a life of luxury for himself, but the life of a homeless traveling teacher.
He lived a perfect and sinless life. The life any of us we should have lived.
He was loved. But he was also hated.
For preaching the word of God and claiming to be the Messiah, Jesus was betrayed into the hands of the Romans and sentenced to torture and death.
Fulfilling the words of Isaiah: He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
And he was hung on a criminal’s cross, endured hours of pain until finally, he died. The King of Kings and light of the world slain by those he came to save. He died the death our sins deserved.
He was buried just before sundown, and his followers left, heartbroken.

How could this be the end, after all that they had seen?
Of course, it wasn’t.
For on the third day, the tomb was discovered to be empty.
Word began to spread that Jesus had been seen alive.
Some believed. Some did not.
But soon enough, both Jesus’s disciples and many who had never believed could no longer deny- Jesus had risen from the dead.
He appeared one final time to his disciples, charging them with the task of spreading the story of his life, his death, and his resurrection- spreading the story of the Good News, that “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
And then, in an instant, he ascended into Heaven, leaving behind another promise for a day when he would return:
“Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; every knee will bow; by me every tongue will swear. In the Lord alone are righteousness and strength.’”
And so we watch, and we wait, for the return of Jesus Christ, the Messiah.

And while we watch and wait, we are charged to be the light of the world in Christ’s stead, to go forth and make disciples of all nations and spread the word of the coming Kingdom, that kingdom which is “not yet”, but that is all the same happening “now” as hearts and minds are renewed in Christ the world over. We are truly living in exile, expatriates of the paradise that was Eden, refugees of a Kingdom that is yet to be fully realized, sent forth as ambassadors to encourage all that would hear: come. 
Come.

The post #13: Advent appeared first on EXPATS OF EDEN.

In the wake of darkness light prevails, because one person loved someone enough to tell them that they were wrong.

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Since exhausting my prayer journal from 2015 and 16, the book I dubbed Sehnnsucht and set about to transcribe here, I have been faced with the bi-weekly conundrum of what to write about, what to set in wax and share with the wider world. I have a file cabinet drawer filled with my journals from the last 10 years, and thought I might glean some insight from a self long-passed. I picked up my oldest journal, from 2011-2012 to see what nuggets I might find. The writing recorded in the pages was miraculous, but for all the wrong reasons.
In those pages I saw first a hopeless romantic waxing poetic about the deeper truths of existence and adamantly defending his faith against an unrealized sociological foe—all the bad, bar-stool arguments against religion straw-manned and cut down in all of their erstwhile glory. The writing began neat and tidy, scrawled with fervent determination the first day on a job when nobody else had bothered to show up on time and this young gentleman was left to his own devices in an office he had no understanding nor preparation for. As the months and following year went by, however, I noticed a shift. The writing, so tidy, so concise, became jumbled and chaotic. Three or four words filling a line that once could hold a sentence. The vehemence in the writer’s stance that he was defending the true faith continued unsullied, but the caliber and coherence of said stance became that of a drunkard, a wraith. A self-assured wise man blathering on about things of which he knew less and less.
Absent context and recorded verbatim in a typed format with uniform font size, I wonder what the world might make of these thoughts. The chipping away of conviction as each month passed, the capitulation to the world system until the final passages reflected a world-view completely agreeable to the most ardent atheist.
I suppose folks might be pleased with such development. The fool-hardy religious child had, it seemed, discovered the truth about the world and adapted as such. He had defanged the Lion of Judah and gone on to present a Gospel that could offend no one. All in a day’s work.
I’ve seen this pattern reflected in the writings of many of my peers who set out those 10 years ago in a similar mindset. They began eager to defend the faith, but along the way capitulated to the world and gave ground to compromise and ultimately untruths, all the while trumpeting their triumph over the nonsense of ages past in light of their newfound enlightenment. I cannot speak to my colleagues personal faith walks, but I can speak to mine, because the Lord saw fit to cut it right short. You see, these entries were miraculous, yes, but context is the key to understanding why.
I know full well where my heart was during the months I’ve described. I know what I did during those months, the drugs that I took, the one-night stands, and the sheer hedonism I had partaken of. I know the rough locations and time-frames of the lost weekends, work-weeks, and finally months that transpired as I recorded my descent into the “deeper truths”. I further know the lies I told myself each and every day from the fall of 2011 until the spring of 2013 when the loaded revolver in my hand seemed a more fitting answer to my hunger after truth than anything that I had been pursuing. “Tomorrow will be better,” a daily mantra, “hang in there,” another, “the night is darkest before the dawn,” I knew my cliches down pat. Beyond those, I devised my own: “church folks are so damned judgmental, they’ll never understand where I’ve come from, and what’s more, how dare they expect me to adhere to their morality—I wasn’t raised that way, it’s a difference of upbringing.”
You’ll notice the implied virtue in each statement: all is contingent upon luck, and my own wherewithal to wait it out. There was no onus of change on my part, no demand that I better myself. I was, despite my protests to the contrary in my journal entries, relying on the world to change, never my heart nor my actions. Surely, I assured myself, surely God would alter the cosmos to reflect my own morality. Surely God would honor my steadfastness in brokenness, adamantly refusing to present anything remotely resembling a sin to him.
So where’s the miracle? Why are these entries anything more than the ramblings of a self-professed “wise man” swinging a wooden sword at windmills while his own world burns? Because I was the writer. I was the man. I was the fool and I can recognize my foolishness for what it was. I see the failure of logic and morality behind each entry and can disavow each and every line in the present.
    More than this, however, I know where I was headed in the midst of it all, and know the consequences. That I emerged from this lifestyle at all and can live to speak out against it is, in itself, a miracle.
    I credit God for the miracle, above anything else. God saw my heart throughout it all. Christ sat beside me during each of the damned rituals I partook of in the meantime, and the Holy Spirit cried out day in and day out that something needed to change. But how? How could anything change when I was unwilling to listen to the Divine calling? A wise teacher once said that God speaks in different ways in different seasons. A way that he calls each of us in a community, however, is through other believers. And this is precisely how he got my attention.

    Where was I when the Lord called me from damnation to salvation? Pre-2013, I had two answers, the first that I had always just “believed in God,” the other that “God became real to me after a suicidal episode in 2007, and that was when I believed,” my answer now is simple: back on that lonely road, I-16 between Savannah and Dublin, Georgia, headed home for Atlanta from college.
    It wasn’t quite the final ride home from the semester, I know that because I returned with sermons blaring from my speakers and a desire to convert my unbelieving girlfriend. It was close to the final drive, however, because I had taken to wearing flip flops in the spring months and was completely assured of myself…until I wasn’t.

    The months preceding this experience had been harrowing: I had set out in November of 2012 with a successful Kickstarter campaign and $12,000 of crowd-funded capital plus my own savings to realize my dream: the production of a feature-length motion picture. By April 20 of 2013, our designated release date chosen so as to coincide with marijuana user’s favorite holiday, I was a shell of a man. I hadn’t slept the week leading up the release, pouring over second after second, frame after frame of the 90-minute movie until I was confident that we were releasing the best possible product. When we finally released the picture, I fell into bed and didn’t get up for several days.
    One of my producers, my best friend and future best man at my wedding, had been in touch during this time. He had shown a great deal of loyalty and resilience during production, quitting his full-time job and foregoing the security of a paycheck in order to realize my dreams of “going Hollywood.” He had slept on my floor and eaten  what I could bring from the campus cafeteria for several months while we wrapped filming, and in the despair that such a situation inevitably brings, had re-discovered his faith.
    We were recording the commentary for the movie in Atlanta a week or so after the movie’s release and stepped out for a smoke. I had always talked a big game about my faith and God’s faithfulness, and this night was no different. “Preston man,” I said, “I can’t believe it, but we’re finally here. The movie’s done, and I can’t wait to see what God has in store for us.”
    Preston was quiet.
“What?” I asked.
    It took him a long while to formulate his thoughts. I expected a sermon, but his response was simple enough, and all the more convicting: “Thorne, I don’t think God’s all that happy with either of us, and anything that we’ve done here.”
    I was thunderstruck. How could he say this? We had been fighting this battle for months now, and now that we were on the other side, we were going to capitulate that we were in the wrong all the while?
    He continued: “I’ve thought about it, I’ve talked about it with my parents and grandparents, and the fact is: I can’t show this movie to anyone I really care about. My poor Mimi would have a heart-attack if she saw what I’ve poured my time and energy into over the last six-months. If this is what it takes to make it in the film industry, I’d rather go back to driving trucks for $15 an hour. At least then I knew where I stood with God and didn’t have to make excuses.”
    I too had felt the shame of the project. We had not written the movie but merely adapted other people’s words, and the fact was that the content we were adapting for the screen would not have secured an R-rating if properly submitted to the MPAA. It would have secured an NC-17. Equivalent to an X rating. Pornographic. Reprehensible. But we had done it, right? We had made the movie and were on the other side! The next movie, I assured myself, would be better, and much more God honoring. You’ve got to pay your dues, you’ve got to prove your worth! You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do so you can finally do what you’ve always wanted! Right?
    Right?
    I ultimately conceded the point.
    I could lie to myself about the movie, but Preston was right. We had sold our souls for notoriety, and I was the ringleader of it all. I had lead my friends astray chasing a pipe-dream and securing a fine millstone around my neck in the process.
    “You should listen to this,” Preston said, pulling a CD from his coat pocket. “I was in church this past week and this sermon…well, I think God wants you to hear it.”
    I looked at the disc: it was a sermon from The Church of The Apostles in Atlanta, the church where Preston had grown up and where I had been an infrequent attender. The sermon itself was on the book of Haggai. I don’t recall the title.
    I left the CD in my car for a few weeks after that until it was time for me to return to Atlanta for I know not what reason. On that drive, before I had even gotten out of the Savannah metropolitan area, something compelled me to listen to that CD. I wasn’t prepared for what was to come.
    The sermon spoke of the remnant of Israel who had returned under King Zerubbabel from the Babylonian exile to rebuild the temple of God in Jerusalem. It seems that their labors to rebuild were skupped in the face of trying to build up their own homesteads and fortunes, leaving the temple in shambles. The prophet Haggai is sent by God to exhort and convict the people, stating that “they ought not to look to their own homes when the Lord’s home was in shambles,” (my own paraphrasing). Haggai goes on to comfort them, saying that they had begun in the right mindset and spirit, but had been misguided by the world. Softly and tenderly, he calls them to resume their work.
    And resume they did. And the Lord blessed their work and their own individual homesteads in the process.
    I pulled into my driveway in Atlanta, not a changed man, but a changing man. This sermon spoke to my heart, called out the folly of my own delusions of grandeur, and called me back to a pure pursuit of the Lord.
    I began to consume the other sermons on offer from the church. I began to preach in my own fallen fashion to those around me about what I had heard. It cost me friendships, it cost me the relationship I was in at the time (for the best, I assure you,) and ultimately set me on a downward spiral of ego-death that resulted in a season of growth… and ultimately to the journal that started this series. It was my great-awakening. It was my ultimate conversion. It was my salvation story, and it came because a friend cared enough to tell me that I was wrong.

    Flash forward three years to 2016. I was back to parent’s house, suffering from extraordinary existential angst, and convicted by God that something had to change. The recurring theme, in prayer, was simple: “community.”
    “What community?” I thought defiantly, “those church folks have never understood me, they don’t know where I’ve been or what I’ve done, why should I go back to them?”
    You know, truthfully, I don’t know what the answer was to that plea. I just know that God called me to community, and somewhere along the way I responded to that call and went back to my then irregularly-attended Bible study, the same community of believers that had originally lead me to my then girlfriend and now wife. And you know what? It was a blessing all its own.
    To be a part of a group of people that held no reservations about one another, but strove as a group to empower each other to become better in the name of Jesus Christ, that was everything that I’d been missing up until that point.

    I found a backpack from 2010, my first year in college. It had a torn bandana tied to one of the straps, from my freshman orientation at Baylor College. We had been asked to write down our prayer requests for the years to come and keep the bandanas with us until the prayers were answered. At the time I had written two things: “close the carnival,” a reference to my emotional instability, something that was ultimately solved by my walk with Christ, and “bring me brethren,” an earnest plea for a place where I belonged.
    I had never felt that I had “fit in” anywhere. Not in high school where I was too artsy, not in college, an art school, where I was too conservative and religious, not in everyday conversation where both of those failings would rear their ugly head—nowhere.
    That is, until I found that group and started showing up every week.
    Where once I had feared not having enough friends to fill out a wedding party, I had to cut people from the party itself in lieu of offering them other jobs in the ceremony. I had found belonging, I had found my true family.
    I found a true “church,” a place where broken people—engineers, web developers, entrepreneurs, teachers, bankers, artisans, and all other sorts of folks with seemingly nothing in common gathered together to share the one thing—the deepest and truest thing that they did have in common: Jesus Christ.
    I’m fairly confident that I burned that bandana. The prayers had been answered.
    And I reflect on an entry in my journal from 2015, about standing before a veil beyond which my true family walked without me and I wonder: had this dream finally come to pass?
    Yes, I think. Yes.

And so, the New Year came and 2017 and the slow pace of the first financial quarter set in. No clients would call for at least a month, and we had no expenses. It was time to set our hands towards a project more our style, and actually invest in a community of believers.

The post #12: Brethren appeared first on EXPATS OF EDEN.

In the days between the crucifixion and resurrection, all seemed to be lost. What were Christ’s disciples to think now that the Messiah was dead and buried? What good could possibly have come from it? We in the modern church have the benefit of seeing the full story, and how God worked through the Passion of Christ to save the lost.

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In the days that followed the “piggy bank incident,” time took on a darker tone. Days were still long and wrought with anxiety, a sense of impending doom pervaded my heart and soul. The television program I was working on, originally the source of so much hope became a black hole of time and mental energy.

One by one the perks fell away. We were castigated by the showrunner at every turn: for wanting to negotiate a contract, for wanting adequate credit for our work in lieu of a proper paycheck, and ultimately for mentioning Jesus by name. The former we could stomach, the latter was unconscionable. Numerous times we set our minds to the task of getting out of the contract we had fought so hard to secure, but for nigh on six months we labored, fighting battle after battle as we began to feel the consequences of burnout. The reason was simple: our work was ultimately speaking for itself and we were gaining ground with our creative decisions—not to mention our insistence to remain true to Christ in all aspects. We told the board of directors point blank that if they wished to cut the name of Christ from the episodes, they would need to fire us. They didn’t. And so we fought.

By the end of the season we had had enough, but were able to walk away satisfied in our labor. We had fulfilled our contract, though Netflix ultimately refused the showrunner’s insistent requests to meet. Though ultimately a failure of a project, and a frankly inefficient use of our time financially, working on that television show had taught both my business partner and I a valuable lesson: just what it meant to take up a cross and follow after Christ.

The days were still dark, my soul was still troubled, but I had carried a heavy load a great distance and grown up somewhere along the trail. The fact is that the burden was one worth carrying, no matter the cost. We had endeavored to make much from little, to glorify God by reflecting the good work He had done in the lives of the show’s numerous subjects, and to not sugar coat the truth of the Gospel. This show would be seen by children across the nation enduring their own struggles. It was our duty to ensure that they did not hear more moralistic, relativist platitudes about “boot-strapping” one’s way through the school of hard knocks, but the honest truth of beauty being brought from ashes, and the genuine heroism that comes from the humbling and sacrifice of self in the name of a greater good. They didn’t need a motivational speech, they needed Jesus.

It’s two years later, and I feel as if I’m at the end of a similar stretch of laboring. There has been much work to be done professionally and personally, long hours and late nights and more tears than I’d like to remember. It has been labor, a cross to bear, but I can’t help but recognize that across that expanse there has been dross burned from my heart and many lessons learned.

It seems counter-intuitive in the difficult moments, and no matter how many times you’ve crossed through the deserts and valleys and caught a glimpse of the next mountain-top vista, the interminable stress of the present conflict has a unique way of blinding us to the reality that our strivings after Christ are not in vain, and that the clouds will someday lift. There is much to be learned from the desert country and valleys, but perhaps none quite like the lesson that, good or bad, God does in fact work all things together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.

This weekend I participated in the planning and execution of an art exhibition commemorating Good Friday for a local church. We collected donations from across the congregation and community at large and arranged them in a themed display that spoke to the importance of this season. Last year we held a similar opening themed around the concept of “creation, fall, and redemption” as envisioned by three trees: the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the Tree of the Curse (the Cross at Calvary), and the Tree of Life in the New Heaven and New Earth. This year our theme was that of “beauty in disparity,” exploring the account of Christ’s death and resurrection, and how it showcases God’s work to weave hardship and chaos into a beautiful tapestry of intent and purpose. As with many things in my life, it seemed an impossible undertaking at the outset, but came together by the grace of God. That is another story, however. In light of the Easter season and all it represents, I’d like to discuss the exhibit itself. It was entitled: Woven.

In the days between the crucifixion and resurrection, all seemed to be lost. What were Christ’s disciples to think now that the Messiah was dead and buried? What good could possibly have come from it? We in the modern church have the benefit of seeing the full story, and how God worked through the Passion of Christ to save the lost.

The exhibit begins with The Last Supper, exploring the themes of celebration and sacrifice. According to Church Tradition, the Thursday prior to Easter is called Maundy Thursday, the night of the Jewish Passover, the Festival of Unleavened Bread. The Passover is a celebration of God’s liberation of Israel from bondage. The Biblical account in Exodus describes the sacrifice of innocent lambs whose blood were to be spread on the door frames of each Israelite home. The blood was to serve as a sign that the household was set apart, so that the Angel of Death would “pass over” as it lay waste to Egypt. This episode of scripture culminates with the Israelite exodus from Egypt, the crossing of the Red Sea, and the foundation of their nation in the deserts on the other side. It is a time of remembrance and celebration for what God has done, yes, but it is tempered by the somber sacrifice of the innocent lamb whose blood upon the post and lintels marked those spared of God’s wrath—the lamb who would be ultimately fulfilled in Jesus Christ, who was betrayed that very night after founding our sacrament of Communion: the breaking of bread and drinking of bitter wine in remembrance for the events that were to follow.

The exhibit then moves to The Garden of Gethsemane to explore the themes of fear and courage. Knowing full well about his imminent betrayal and all that would follow, Jesus retired to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray alone—for his closest friends could not stay awake to keep watch with him. In fear and agony he begged to be spared the dreadful ordeal to come—the full force of God’s wrath poured out upon his entire being in exchange for the pardon of all who would profess faith in him. Repeatedly he asked if there wasn’t another way for this story to unfold, another plan for mankind’s salvation, yet all the while he set aside his preference in deference to the will of God. There was no other plan, no other road to salvation. So, despite the looming reality of cosmic annihilation, Christ laid down his will in exchange for The Father’s. In courage, then, he stood to face his captors, for courage is not the  lack of fear, but merely action in the face of it. And, after they fell to the ground at his affirmation that it was him whom they sought, they lead him away towards judgment and torment.

Our next station brought us to the streets of Jerusalem and the future shores of Galilee to examine denial and affirmation. So bold was the apostle Peter, swearing to not only stand by Jesus, but to die for him. He was proven a coward that very night. He, along with the rest of the disciples, fled in terror at the sight of the Roman contingent. Later that night, Peter was confronted three times about his involvement with Christ’s ministry. Each time, he denied it, much to his shame. The culmination of this episode is not in Peter’s humbling, but in his redemption. Later, after Christ’s resurrection, on the shores of Galilee, Peter was granted the chance to affirm his commitment to Jesus. Three times he was asked whether or not he loved Jesus. Peter affirmed his love and commitment each time, his affirmation tuned to perfection by the harrowing events that came before. Later, tradition holds that Peter would eventually be confronted again for his commitment to Jesus and participation in the founding of the early church. This time, Peter did not waver, and fulfilled his original oath: to suffer and die for Christ on a cross of his own.

We did not dwell on the torture of Christ, instead focusing on its ultimate realization: the crucifixion, and the condemnation and grace it reflects. Crucifixion was a ghastly form of execution meant to humiliate and torment its victims. Tied or nailed to a cross, often stripped naked and exposed to the elements, traitors, thieves, murderers, and the vilest of society were left to suffocate to death or die from exposure—whichever came first. It was upon a criminal’s cross that the innocent Jesus was ultimately fixed following a night of brutal torture at the hands of the Romans. Hanging there, beaten, bloodied, and likely hideously deformed from his ordeal, Jesus bore the full condemnation of God’s wrath—the fair exchange for the souls of men. Even so, in the depths of despair, he extended his grace and forgiveness to a thief who was hung next to him, and to those who hammered the very nails that fixed him there even as they divided his clothing among them. I contemplate the names past, present, and future that flitted through his dying mind during those final moments. The names of those for whom he was dying, their crimes against humanity and God deeply known and felt. For how long must those moments have lasted as the full brunt of human depravity was paid for by his blood and agony? At which point must my name have crossed his mind? I thank God that the plea for forgiveness extended to the Romans, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do,” was recorded as assurance that though I am complicit in his crucifixion, by his wounds I have been saved.

“It is finished.” His last words.

The earth shook and other natural and supernatural phenomena, including an apparent mass haunting as the dead sprang to life in the city, brought terror down upon all those in attendance. “Surely,” one present is recorded to have said, “this was the son of God,” recognition that deicide had been committed to the thunderous applause of a fallen nation. Within the temple, the curtain separating the Holy of Holies from the outside world, a curtain signifying the denial of access to God directly was torn down the middle: no longer would broken men and women be separated from God if they sought an audience.

And, as the sun began to set on Good Friday, Christ’s followers took his body from the cross to entomb it without ceremony in the grave of an aristocrat—even as Judas, his betrayer, found eternal rest in a Potter’s Field, a graveyard for the derelict and vagrants of the city.

The first day, Good Friday, ended.

The second day, Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, passed. In what manner of spiritual anguish must those who loved Jesus have passed those quiet hours? They had had such faith. They had believed the fulfillment of their entire cultural history had come in the life and ministry of Christ. What now? If the Christ could be killed, what hope was there for Israel? What hope was there for anyone? Surely death and Hades would triumph, forever consuming the souls of all those damned to be born upon our orphaned planet. Were there those with faith still yet kindled on that bleak Sabbath? Did anyone suspect what was to come?

The second day ended.

The third day began.

Female followers of Christ set out to make good on what ceremony they could, arriving at the tomb to wash and anoint their fallen Lord. Yet, the tomb had been ransacked. The massive stone which had been lashed and fixed with a Roman seal had been cast aside by an inconceivable force. Who could have done such a mighty thing? What’s more, the corpse had vanished; only linen wrappings remained. Who could be so monstrous as to defile the corpse of an itinerant preacher by stripping it bear and carrying it off into the night?

The women sought out the gardener, pleading that they might yet still find their broken savior. But they did not find the gardener, instead they found the most wondrous sight attested to in the annals of world history: Jesus, the doomed and desecrated would-be messiah was not dead… but alive. Restored to life, recovered from his torment—save for the scars of the wounds he had suffered. Thomas Aquinas once wrote that: “It was fitting for Christ’s soul at His Resurrection to resume the body with its scars. In the first place, for Christ’s own glory. For Bede says on Luke 24:40 that He kept His scars not from inability to heal them, “but to wear them as an everlasting trophy of His victory.” Victory over sin, victory over death, victory for all who would come to know and love him forever amen.

He sent the women out from that place to evangelize to a historically patriarchal society—a further sign of Christ’s usurpation of the status quo. And evangelize they did, proclaiming that “He is risen,” the wondrous cry of victory echoed in unknown scores of foreign tongues each and every year on Easter Sunday. For he is risen indeed, and never died again.

We linger at the tomb at the end of our exhibition to contemplate that call to action. Truly, “it is finished,” Christ declared it so upon the cross at Calvary. He paid the ultimate price so that sinners like me would not have to. The saving act of mankind was done and we reflected that with one our final themes: completion. Completion in the redemption of all who would believe. But this completion is tempered by the Great Commission that followed his resurrection: the call to action for all who call him Lord to go forth and proclaim that “he is risen,” to make disciples of all nations, to embody Christ for the world, ensured of his saving work and eternal counsel. Commission. Our final theme, and the end of our exhibit.

Across these five stations, numerous pieces hung. Some were religious, but oddly enough, most were not. A cornucopia of works wrent by hands who call Christ Lord, each one affixed with twine leading to the rafters where we hung a massive snarl of ropes festooning across the gallery space, strings and ropes from all of our themes: celebration, sacrifice, fear, courage, denial, affirmation, condemnation, grace, completion, and commission, all ultimately being woven together around a humble cross bearing blood stains and nail marks in the center of it all.

And such is all of life. Thank God it is not ours to make sense of.

The post #11: Woven appeared first on EXPATS OF EDEN.

We all remember the mountaintop experiences, where we feel as though we can touch Heaven. But those experiences are few and far between. Most of life is lived beneath the clouds in the valley, and often, in spiritual deserts.

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A few years ago, I was hired by a friend of mine to run camera for a small non-for-profit that was sponsoring a cyclist in the annual Race Across America bicycle race. For two weeks, nine days of which were spent on the road, we lived life-on-life with the heads of the organization, “Hope 4 Gabe,” as well as the organization’s namesake, Gabe himself. Diagnosed at an early age with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, Gabe was fighting for his life on a daily basis, but he wasn’t fighting alone. His father had started the organization to raise awareness and funds for medical research to cure the disease, and their primary fundraising effort had become ultra-distance bicycle races. The year prior, the cyclists had made their way from the Northern United states down to Alabama, and this year a single cyclist, Brian Toone, was embarking on a cross-country ride from Ocean Side, California to Annapolis, Maryland. He was projected to finish his ride, all 3000+ miles, in 10 days. The idea was that the physical toll that these rides take on cyclists was an observable reflection of the physical toll that Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy takes on its victims. As Gabe’s father put it, Brian Toone started in California completely energized, just as Gabe was before his diagnosis. When he arrived at the first waystation in Prescott, Arizona, 373 miles from the starting line, he was barely able to walk and had to be physically assisted to the hotel room where he would recoup for a few hours. This, Scott said, in the span of a few days, was the same physical degeneration that Gabe had experienced over the past several years. The catch was that Brian Toone was going to recover. Without a cure, Gabe was not.


    We spent those nine days crossing the country, mainly on county highways and backroads, overlapping and documenting Brian’s ride as he passed out of California by way of the desert, rode through Monument Valley, Utah, at sunset, crossed the Great Divide in Colorado, traversed the great plains into the Ozarks, across the rust belt, before finding his way into Appalachia and finally, to the shining sea. So many memories. And yet, the truly memorable moments of that two-week stretch probably only amount to a few hours across the entirety of the venture. The majority of those days were spent in transit. Driving or riding interminable hours through deserts, plains, and forests.

    By the end of it, so much had changed. Our group had transformed: along that journey there were support crewmembers who dropped in and dropped out. Greetings and goodbyes, the forging and breaking of fellowship. Moreso, our perspective had changed. We had seen the country not from the sky nor the interstate, but intimately: from backroads and byways that the majority of travelers will never see. When we arrived in Maryland, it was hard to even consider that we had traveled so many miles in such a short period of time. The beginnings in California seemed like another lifetime.

    But when Brian Toone turned that final corner and pedalled on through the finish line, time seemed to stand still. I looked around and saw that everybody—all of the crew members from every stage of the journey, family and friends who were present at the send off in California but didn’t travel along with the support team, folks that I had forgotten over the last two weeks, everybody—were there, waiting to greet him and cheer him on in the final moments. It was a grand homecoming, as if no time had passed at all. The fact that he crossed the finish line at golden hour added to the effect and echoed something eternal in the same way that a wedding ceremony does. He crossed the stage to receive his medal and I noted just how beaten he and the other cyclists seemed. Like wild-west outlaws who had died bad deaths, they stood shoulder to shoulder, limp faced as the photographer snapped their portraits. But even so, the journey was complete, the struggle was done. All of those miles crossing the country began to dim and fade  in the face of completion, but the landmarks stood out all the same. It made me consider some of the finer points of sanctification I had learned the year prior, and how misguided I had been in my pursuit of Christ.

When we read the Bible, it’s easy to be flippant with the accounts within. “This happened, then this happened, so and so begat so and so, and then God showed up and wiped them out.” Rinse and repeat. That sort of reading neglects a crucial point of scripture, however: that it records distinct moments in time that are spread out across years and centuries. Much of the milieu of day to day life, most of the lives of the heroes of faith even, are absent from the written record. Those details are lost in the spaces between paragraphs, the moments when God wasn’t overtly present and making a point. You see, we all remember the mountaintop experiences, the landmarks of our walks with the Lord wherein we feel as though we can touch Heaven. But we often forget and neglect the fact that much of our walks take place beneath the clouds, down in the valley, and often times in spiritual deserts.

    When Rebekah and I started dating in April of 2016, I was at the tail end of a mountaintop experience with God. I had ventured forth into the wilderness, I had sought after God, I had sinned greatly, repented drastically, and taken a great leap of faith into the void. My prayer life was flourishing, each day’s reading of the Bible seemed like opening a brand new text. I was beginning to date the woman who I would eventually marry. In my mind there was little that could get in my way. Without recognizing that moment for what it was, I began to descend beneath the clouds of the mountain and back into the valley.

Rebekah took a one-year residency at a therapeutic boarding school in Texas two months into our relationship, and I was, at first, devastated. Yet I still had some afterglow about me following my time on the mountaintop, and I committed to growing as an individual while she did the same 1,000 miles away. No big deal. The summer of 2016 passed with little victories: my business partner and I were finally able to purchase some legitimate equipment, forever circumventing the irksome rental process if we wished to work for a client or ourselves. We produced some original short films that we were quite happy with. We were finally taking steps with our business that seemed a long time coming until finally, we were brought onboard to associate produce and edit a television series, updating old broadcast episodes with new branding and pacing to be sold to Netflix.

It was a dream come true. And then it wasn’t.

Nearly every month while Rebekah was out in Texas, I made the trek from Atlanta, west along I-20, to see her. I got very good at the drive, knowing exactly how to pace my departure and driving speeds in order to avoid the worst of the speed traps and traffic in the cities I passed through. On one of the return drives early on, an overnight venture accompanied by Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Cost of Discipleship, a deep sense of existential dread set in. What if, I thought, I was mistaken about my faith? What if I was merely wise in my own eyes? What if I wasn’t truly saved?

    I arrived back in Atlanta at 9am and immediately drove to the church and requested a meeting with my mentor to discuss these things. He suggested that I was possibly asking these questions because I was about to enter a stage of spiritual adolescence. I had come back to faith in Christ three years prior, and it seemed likely that I was about to enter a period of intense growth. He encouraged me to read the New Testament and pray on the transition. I walked out of the meeting feeling slightly better, but still in doubt.

    Things began to fall apart soon after.

In the wake of taking on the show, my other clients fell away and I was faced with the prospect of losing my home again. It being so close to the renewal date, I opted to move out early and ride out the lease. Business would pick up eventually, but why expend so much money on an apartment when I could live at home with my folks and save while we rebuilt this television program?

We very soon learned why so many of the show’s above-the-line crew had either quit or been fired over the last few years. The pay was pittance and the showrunner had a God complex. Even so, it was a break, right? We were finally working above-the-line on something that could be seen by a large audience. What’s more, the show was for a church market, surely being able to glorify Christ through our work was the greatest win for any Christian. We dove into the show with more passion and fervor than anything we’d ever done before. This, we reasoned, was God’s call for our lives.

We agreed to an insane production schedule. 200 minutes of content edited from scratch within a three week timespan. Tensions ran high, then ebbed again as we worked through the project in prayer. At some point I stopped sleeping.

One Sunday morning, I lay awake in bed, jittery from caffeine and an all-nighter working on the show. I could feel it in my body that it was probably ideal that I don’t go to church, but I thought better. I was so convinced of God’s anointing on what I was doing that I prayed, felt self-assured, and went anyway.

The sermon was convicting, the worship even moreso. It’s difficult for me to discuss what transpired during that service, only that it was a final flash of the mountaintop, a religious experience very similar to my conversion event, that lit my heart on fire that God’s will for my life was to “keep moving” in my career, to stand in the face of the sea and press onward. I was on top of the world, eager to relate my newfound insight to any who would listen.

I had picked up another client to help smooth over the transition away from my apartment lease. I was due in McDonough, Georgia at 8am the very next day. For the first time in a while, riding the high of this religious experience at church, I was excited to make the drive and see what there was to see. I went to bed that night eager to discover what God had for me. But I couldn’t sleep.

That sleeplessness extended out for a week, each night becoming an exercise in futility as I tossed and turned. Panic set in, and somewhere in there I suffered a nervous breakdown in front of my client. I had good enough rapport that I did not lose the client, but still, it happened, and it was a nightmare realized. On the drive home that day I prayed, and felt an overwhelming sense of anxiety and imminent doom wash over me. I began to tremble and shake—it was the first and only panic attack that I have ever suffered.

    I continued to pray, but instead of comfort I felt condemnation. I saw my life through clear eyes for the first time in years. I saw the pain that I caused others, my personal failures, all of my destructive habits, my workaholism that had driven me insane, and what had all of my efforts done for me? Where had they lead? To a lonely, cold, basement apartment. Living with my parents again at the age of 25. There was a deep sense of failure, but even moreso the feeling of conviction that I had been wandering astray. I remember clutching my shirt and desperately wishing to tear it from my body. In the Old Testament there’s repeated episodes of those convicted by God rending their garments in sorrow. I know what they meant by that now.

    Existential horror loomed over me. Each day was a moment-to-moment grasp for anything that might take my mind off of the looming question: “what if you’re not really a Christian? What if you are a hellbound heart?” I began to fear the end of the world, and the crumbling of all that I held dear.

    I continued to cry out to God. God, it seemed, did not hear me.

    One sleepless night found me at my old apartment, pouring over paperwork to find my checkbook. I desperately wanted help and knew of an intensive course at the church entitled “Living Waters” that might be just what the doctor ordered.

    I signed up. They took me. Yet, still, I was in the grip of anxiety.

    Days bled into one another. I don’t know how much time passed. A month, maybe two.

    One night, in the depths of sleepless despair, I prayed again. Nothing. I wandered through the darkened house searching for something. It may have been a Bible, but I don’t remember. What I do remember is opening a cabinet and my little sister’s ceramic piggy bank falling out and shattering to pieces on the kitchen floor. I stooped to pick it up, lamenting one more failure in the destruction of a uniquely crafted, much loved object. “I can fix this,” I thought.

    I collected the pieces, sat down at the table, and set to work. Each piece required delicate precision and intense care to fasten back in place. The task, it seemed, was too great. But no matter, I loved my sister, I was going to make things right. Then it clicked.

    I was broken. Broken worse than the piggy bank, broken worse than I could ever imagine. I didn’t need to be “OK” and at peace with myself, I didn’t need to achieve and find identity in works. I needed to be fixed. In all of my chasing after God, in all of contemplation on His holiness, in all of my efforts to “be a good Christian,” I was neglecting one supremely important point: The Gospel. I was so concerned with God’s wrath that I neglected to consider His grace. That Christ had died for me, that I might be saved from destruction—both cosmic and self-imposed.

    Did this realization heal my anxiety? Not on your life. Did it radically change my perspective? Absolutely.

    I was still walking in the desert. My prayer life still seemed tepid and devoid of answers, but I marched forward through the haze, resolute in the fact that I was being heard, no matter if I “felt it” or not.

The post #10: Into the Desert appeared first on EXPATS OF EDEN.

A wedding, a honeymoon, and a perilous outing on the river bring up concern of idols and how to best live one’s life.

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A month ago, the day after my wedding, I uploaded my pre-recorded account of God’s blessings leading up to and, at the time, hopefully including my wedding day, and contemplated what the future might hold. As I have stated before, this podcast and blog has been a long-overdue outlet for writing that is now over three years old, seen through the lens of my current perception. That’s all well and good, but there are very few pages left in that old journal. I have been keeping shorthand notes for years on different musings and contemplations, but eventually, if I keep this up, I’ll be writing and recording in real time, and that troubles me. You see, the struggles I reflect on in my writing are easily recognized three years down the trail, but in the moment, absent my commentary and reflection, I thought myself to be in-tune and in the right. It took stumbling and failure to see my hubris, and where idols had sprung up in my life. I am concerned that if I begin writing and recording in real-time, I won’t have the same degree of accountability, and as such will have to keep an ever-more vigilant watch over my heart.  I don’t make the same exact mistakes twice, but I do make the same type of mistakes again and again. My marriage, wonderful as it is, has exposed this truth, and what’s more, my heart.



    For years I have heard that there are a few landmark “happiest” moments in a person’s life. A month ago, I crossed one off of my life list: my wedding day.

    How shall I relate the joy of that day? Any attempt to record it will seem cheap and dim. It was day on which heaven touched earth very briefly, yet distinctly, and all in attendance were privy to that fact—especially those who had no conception for it ahead of time. Of all of the well-wishes that have followed from that day, none have stood out quite like those of unbelieving friends and family who were astounded at the sense of love, warmth, and overflowing joy that emanated from not only myself and my beautiful bride, but likewise from the community that God has brought us into. It brought to mind the scriptural teaching that the world would know Christ’s believers by the love they showed one another. Sure enough, the witness was there.

    I’ve been turning back the pages of my wedding gift to my bride, a hand-bound journal chronicling our relationship, and now our marriage, and with each summary sentence of the day’s memorable moments, precious sacred scenes flash by my sight and I am again humbled at how truly blessed we have been in our romance. What could I possibly relate that could summarize that day?

    The night before when my brother and I, in a last hurrah, pranked the bridal party by banging on windows around the venue before patching Jocelyn Pook’s “Masked Ball” into the A/V system? In my revelry I witlessly cut power to the reception hall, making it exceptionally easy for my bride-to-be to track me down. As I crept back around the building she threw a door open and I saw her briefly in silhouette before I ran, shrieking, and ducked into the cattle paddocks, fleeing for dear life as “the bride” stalked after me, calling out “Thorne Winter,” into the frigid night.

    I climbed back up to the A/V booth and urged my brother to hide, “game over man!” but it was to no avail. The door flew open once more and we were found out, and succinctly doused in freezing water and publically humiliated. It was glorious.

    The ceremony itself: lining up outside, a feeling of peaceful finality coupled with frenetic electric trepidation at the gravity of it all. The image of Christ and the Church before the throne of God: the wedding party, closest friends prior to the union, looking ever-so-much like the twelve disciples standing beside the altar. Then, my bride, radiant and joyous, and living up to the meaning of her name: “captivating.” So many memories from that night will be remembered only in photos, because I so seldom looked away from her from that moment on.

    Our vows, custom-written. I had writer’s block leading up to the big day, and finished mine the night before:

    I once was but a traveller,
    Set firmly towards the sea,
    Caring not for none but I,
    No thought for us nor “we.”

    Then all at once I knew myself,
    Knew the lonely ties that bind,
    Then, in fear, I made my way,
    Leaving woe and strife behind.

    Till finally there, upon a shore,
    Bright shining as the sun,
    I left my burdens to themselves,
    And then, the battle won.

    For then, no sooner, had I dropped
    My burden by the shore,
    By Christ’s own light,
    And none my own,
    I found love and so much more.

    You, my bride, I love you dear,
    Let not my heart e’er stray,
    Might I keep a steady watch by night,
    And at the break of day.

    May I ever hearken close to thee,
    May I ever seek thy heart,
    And until the Lord may call us home,
    Let our hearts not drift apart.

Our officiate, our mutual mentor who had counseled us before and during our relationship preached a sermon on how Rebekah and I complemented one another: how she drew me out of my shell, and how I kept her more carefree personality grounded.

Communion together, prayer, and finally: the kiss.   

After the ceremony: bountiful barbecue, the humorous sight of my grandmother nearly kissing one of my groomsmen, my bride singing to me during our first dance, the tearful father-daughter dance to “Butterfly Kisses”, the lighthearted mother-son dance to “Stand By Me” that devolved halfway through into a choreographed “Thriller” dance-session fitting of a flash mob. The roar of the crowd, the joy in the air, the sparklers blazing as we made our escape—Rebekah fell getting into the carriage and sported a bruised shin for the first two weeks of our marriage. The horse pulling the carriage getting spooked ten yards away from our car and nearly bolting into the night–

Then it was over. The long drive home. And then, I cried.

I cried because our wedding was everything that we had ever wanted it to be. I cried because it was perfect. It was Christ-centric. It was God-honoring. But more than that, I cried because it was truly a slice of Heaven. And yet, by the end of it…we had wanted to leave.

The first week of marriage was a whirlwind of conflicting emotions as the inevitable dopamine crash of the “big day” hit the next morning. It scared the daylights out of my wife to see me alternate between being overjoyed at our marriage and a sobbing mess at the prospect of never getting to eat our wedding meal again as it was specially catered by a family friend. Me at one moment gushing at how beautiful the ceremony and reception were and then immediately weeping over the exact same thing. It was so incredibly humbling to see how many people showed up to help prepare for and celebrate our wedding day. I won’t try to list their names here because I’ll forget someone and never be able to forgive myself.

I’m very glad to have those strange first days behind me.

We honeymooned in Asheville, North Carolina, took in the splendor of the city and the wilderness surrounding it, living life-on-life in a way neither of us had before and, finally, returned home.

The honeymoon was over, back to real life.

The daily grind, the familiar schedule, now complicated by another life.

I wish I could say that we remained joyful and happy throughout the complications of our new life, but I would be lying.

We have laughed and cried together, argued and reconciled, counseled and annoyed one another. We’re living life together, and I couldn’t be happier.

That’s how I feel right now, as I write this. But the fact is that this month has opened my eyes to the fact that though I am a married man, there is still a great trail ahead of me, and much work to be done.

When we argue, it tends to be over matters of communication: chiefly that I am terrible at it. If not communication, then I will be brooding and somber and unable or willing to articulate it. My recurring excuse: “I need some time to be creative, I need some time to unwind, I need some time to be by myself and….”

That may well be. Our time in marriage counseling revealed as much. However, this is not the full story. There was a war within my heart that I had not yet recognized, and it wasn’t until this weekend that God presented it plainly before me.

Saturday was our one-month anniversary, and Rebekah’s request was to do something adventurous, outdoorsy, and new. Music to my ears.

We set out in a canoe, a family heirloom borrowed from my grandfather, along the Chattahoochee River, my first such endeavor in ten years and Rebekah’s first time period. What could go wrong?

My communication, for starters.

I had neglected to process that Rebekah didn’t know how to sit in a canoe, balance in a canoe, or paddle a canoe until we were on the water. That first twenty minutes was rough, and I thought that the day might be lost due to my grumpiness and her ensuing reaction. But, sure enough, I was wrong. She took to canoeing like a champ, and we made our way down flat water and tiny rapids for a few miles before passing under I-285 and approaching “The Devil’s Racecourse”, a notorious set of rapids just inside the perimeter. I assured her that we would be fine, these rapids were only slightly bigger than those we had already conquered.

I was wrong.

We made it through the first set with little incident, but a rock beneath the surface of the water coupled with my mind blanking—are we supposed to stop paddling or just power on through this?—lead to the first spill of the trip.

We were swept down the rest of the Devil’s Racecourse, clinging to our swamped boat, until we hit some calmer water, and were able to drag ourselves to shore with the help of some good Samaritans.

It wasn’t the best introduction to the sport, but I assured Rebekah that it was a fluke—”we won’t hit anymore rapids like those,” I promised, and if we did, “there’s no way we’ll flip again.”

So, after an appropriate time of contemplation during which I ferried our newfound friends to the local “Jumping Rock,” we set out once more, hit a series of rapids, and promptly flipped again.

We dragged our boat to shore once more, and I repeated my spiel: “no more rapids, no more flipping, yadda yadda yadda.”

Rebekah was skeptical, but we were stranded on an island in the river and had to get back into the canoe. I pointed out an ideal point of egress, and, after much convincing, we disembarked: and immediately lost our canoe as it was quickly submerged in a strainer against a fallen tree.

I helped Rebekah climb out of the boat, over the tree, and drift downstream to a safe place onshore. I, on the other hand, was royally screwed.

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