Songs

As life quickly passes me by, I often forget things that I used to do. When my wife and I first met, I was doing a lot of coffeehouses in Connecticut. I chuckle to myself now as I think about how much I've grown since then. I recall a few moments that make me cringe. Before my wife and I were even dating, I had played one of my songs in church. She asked me whether or not she could get a copy of the words. You would think that a guy with half a brain would respond in the affirmative. Instead, I gave her some lame excuse about copyrights and how I was trying to protect my work. Really? Are you kidding me?

Another time, I had been invited to play at a gathering of student fellowship groups on the campus of the University of Connecticut. I guess I wasn't expecting to be background noise to people. I think I made some pretty rude comments that were only heard by the handful of people who were actually listening. Unbelievable. While I still have my moments, I've grown a lot in the last 15 years...thankfully.

I had a rare moment of peace the other day and I took out my acoustic guitar. The beauty of those peaceful moments is that in the midst of them, it is possible to weave through song after song. You start with one song, which reminds you of another song, which leads you to another, and before you know it, you find yourself swept away. It's a pretty cool experience. It's almost like playing musical "Six Degrees of Separation." How can I go from Guns n Roses' "Patience" to Dan Fogelberg's "Longer" in 6 steps or less?

It's been a while since I've written anything significant. Life has a way of doing that to us. Other things have taken priority, although I would love to get to a place where I might do it again. In the years leading up to my marriage, I actually recorded a CD with my own money (I was an engineer at the time, so I actually had some extra money). I've written plenty of other stuff since then, just haven't had the time, money, or other resources to make a recording a reality.

One of the songs that I stumbled upon as I played through some music was a song called "Never Said Goodbye" that I had written some years ago. Actually wrote it on August 13, 1999, to be exact. My wife was still in college while I was doing a lot of coffeehouses in our area. Her parents and their friends would come to hear me often. Looking back, they sure were great pre-in-laws to me.

The friends that they brought with them were another couple from church. The husband had been diagnosed with cancer, but he was still pretty vibrant. I never heard him complain and he always seemed genuine and authentic to me. I grew pretty accustomed to having both couples there when I would play the little pie shop down the street from our church on Black Rock Turnpike in Fairfield.

After having battled with cancer for some time, this friend finally succumbed to the terrible disease, leaving his wife and their three children as well as a son from another marriage behind. It was a really sad day for me. I guess that in some ways, I felt that death had gotten closer. Although we weren't incredibly close, I still felt a connection to this man. He was incredibly supportive and it was always great to see his smiling face when I played.

His wife wanted me and Carrie to sing at the funeral. I desperately fought to find the words to write a song, but they wouldn't come. I spent hours and hours searching for a way to express myself, but words just wouldn't come. We ended up choosing a Steven Curtis Chapman song, much better than anything I would have written, and how could you go wrong with SCC? A day or two after the funeral, I finished my song.

I was a little frustrated that it hadn't come earlier. I was a little frustrated that I was not able to share it with more people. A part of me wondered if Howard had heard it. There was no biblical basis for my thoughts, only dreams and wishes. But I still wondered.

In the wake of my mom's death, I was reminded of this song. There were some parallels, but not many, and I didn't want to cheapen the first experience with the song, nor did I want to give Mom second best. I was not a huge fan of Elton John revamping "Candle In the Wind" for Diana. Wasn't she worth more than that?

One day, I might actually record the song. To be honest, I was surprised that I actually remembered how to play the song. It has been years since I had played it in public. But I think that it came at the right time. The difference between my friend, Howard, and Mom was that I actually had the chance to say "goodbye" to Mom, and I did. I do long for that day when I will get to see them both again and when we won't have to say "goodbye." Even now, I think I'm gonna hold on to the fact that it's not really "goodbye," just "so long for now."

Never Said Goodbye by Jon Gibson

I remember the way you laughed, I remember the way you smiled,

How the light just danced within your eyes, like a child.

With a brilliance that could fill a room and a smile that just shined,

You'd share all of the joy in life that you'd find.

Now you've gone away, but you've left us with the pain,

Searching for the reason why.

All the memories and the love will still remain, but you never said goodbye.

You fought with a courage that makes lions look so small.

Your will to live brought that courage home to us all.

Finally, when you knew that the day was to arrive,

Your head held high, your fears cut low, you taught us how to die.

Now you've gone away, but you've left us with the pain,

Searching for the reason why.

All the memories and the love will still remain, but you never said goodbye.

Now time will pass, the pain will ease, the scars will still remain,

But our faith stands firm and we know,

That there's a place where we will meet again,

A place where our sorrows cannot go.

We will go away where there isn't any pain,

No need to question why.

All the memories and the love will still remain, but we'll never say goodbye.

Blessings

Two milestone dates are fast approaching within the next week. The two month anniversary of my mom's death is on September 19th and my little boy will turn 3 years old on September 20th. It's a pretty incredible picture to me of the complexity of life: death and life set side by side. The other milestone that is fast approaching is the birth of our daughter. Although the due date is September 25th, there's really no telling exactly when she will come. Both of our boys were a few days early, so we will see whether or not she follows suit.

Throughout the process and journey of my mom's cancer battle and my family's struggle, I was pretty confident of two things. First of all, I knew that God was with us through the storms. He may not have been shouting through it all, but his presence was felt by my entire family. Second of all, I knew that I was incredibly blessed to have had a loving and giving community of faith in which I was a part. Within hours of my mom's diagnosis, people had come alongside me and my family to show their support. In the journey from struggle to death to new life, my family and I have been so incredibly blessed to the point of ultimate humility. Who am I to have deserved the incredible love and support that was showered upon me? What have I done to deserve it?

In many ways, I guess it really speaks to who my mom and dad were and are. We received an incredible amount of support from friends, family, and church family in Connecticut. That was one of the big reasons that my brother organized a memorial service for my mom on her birthday in our hometown. Although my dad was the fairly well-known in their community, no one could deny that my mom was his backbone and support. She was as much responsible for him being who he is and there were many people who knew that. But she was also unique and individual in herself and those who knew her, knew that was the case.

My wife has a friend who lost her mom much earlier than I did. In fact, this friend was married without the privilege of the physical presence of her mom. Throughout the whole process of treatment and decline, my wife quietly served behind the scenes. She watched the boys, informed and updated people, supported me, and just generally held things together. Words can't even begin to express how blessed that I am to have such an incredible and selfless wife.

This friend of my wife understands loss. After Mom died, we received a package in the mail and opened it up to find the plaque shown in these pictures. It arrived before any kind of note, so we were not sure who had sent it to us. A few days after it had arrived, we got the note from Carrie's friend, indicating that it had come from her and her husband. The fact that she had been the one to send it made it that much more meaningful to me.

As I struggled towards the end with the loss of my relationship with Mom, I expressed some of that to my wife. I was feeling somewhat self-conscious of the fact that I was a 38 year old man who considered his mother a best friend. There are many women who would never have been able to handle that. Their own lack of self-confidence would have produced jealousy, anger, or any other array of strong emotions within them. I am incredibly blessed to have been partnered with a wife whose struggles with those things, if they existed at all, do not dominate who she is.

As we talked and I vented some of my emotions to my wife, she gave me words that I will forever cherish, just as I forever cherish her. I asked her if it was weird that I had this kind of relationship with my mom. She said, "Jon, when something good happens in your life, there are two people that you call, your mom and me. The kind of relationship that you have had with your mom is the kind of relationship that I want to have with our boys. You have showed me a model for how to do that." Could I really be so blessed to have such an incredible wife? Was I really hearing these words? Yes. And Yes.

I generally have a good sense about things that are going on around me. At any given time in my life, I probably multi-task way more than any human being ever should. There have definitely been times though, when I have been so out of it or consumed that I have missed some obvious things. I am sure that the last nine months have been among those times.

I am blessed to lead some incredible people at my church. Every week, I have the privilege of getting together with 8-10 people to pull together some of our Sunday services. Their patience and endurance is incredible. I am not always the easiest person to get along with, yet I don't hear a lot of complaints. I have a tendency to accentuate the negative and gloss over the positive. I expect a lot and don't always explicitly communicate those expectations, to my own frustration. In the end, God always works through us and we are blessed to lead people in worship, focusing our congregation on the One whom we worship, not ourselves or our talents.

Last week, I arrived home a little earlier than usual. On days when I have night meetings, I do my best to get home a little earlier so as to preserve time with my family. My wife smiled when I arrived and told me that someone would be coming to the door within the next few minutes. Something had been in the works for me, she said, and the day had finally come for that "something" to actually happen. I scratched my head as I tried to decipher exactly what this riddle meant.

The doorbell rang and a husband and wife from church were there. They had brought with them a gardenia plant. The team that I work most closely with had come together and bought a gardenia plant for us to plant in our yard. Someone who had been to Mom's funeral had made a mental note that gardenias were her favorite flower. Every year, whenever my dad would buy her corsages, they would be made of gardenias. The Sunday after Mom died, my parent's former church in Connecticut handed out gardenias to all of the ladies in honor of the woman who had discipled and mentored so many of them.

Tears had not come in a long time, but as I sat there with the description tag of the gardenia plant in my hand, reading through the card that had been given from my team, they began to flow again. I was speechless. I had no idea why I deserved anything like this, but I realized that I must have made some impact on these people to have received such an incredibly special and meaningful gift. These pictures show both the plaque and the gardenia bush.

As my mom's final days wound down, we had discovered a prayer on her bedside table that I shared in an earlier post. The prayer was based on Isaiah 61, my mom had personalized the passage into a prayer which she could regularly pray. A portion of it says, "They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of his splendor." I included it within my eulogy at her funeral.

Last week, my brother organized a memorial service on September 11th, my mom's birthday. Since I was not able to be there, he read what I had read at my mom's funeral. In the wake of loss and grief, life passes us by without much notice and we sometimes discover later what it is that we had missed. As my brother read what I had written, the idea of my mom having been a planting of the Lord, especially in her death, stood out to him. In fact, he had missed that altogether during the funeral.

This theme of being a planting has been dominant in the wake of Mom's death. Not only had she had this prayer on her bedside table, but she had quoted those verses to me several times over the last year. My brother held the memorial service in our hometown at a park near where he works. He received permission from the parks and recreation department to plant a tree in memory of my mom. The day before the memorial, he and a childhood friend of mine planted the tree. Later that week, the gardenia bush was planted in my back yard. New life is springing up all over, but it only came through death. Death brings life, much life.

My daughter will arrive shortly, and even in her name, the idea of planting is prevalent. Her name will be Chloe Irene Joy which means "blooming peace and joy." There is birth and there is death. Plants grow and plants die. Throughout the journey, may we rest in the blessings of just having had the experiences. Every day, we all experience blessings, it's just a question of whether or not we stop long enough to see them, notice them, and be thankful for them. I am blessed.

Hitting For Average

As October approaches, life gets exciting for baseball fans. Of course, it's much more exciting if your team actually plays in the playoffs, but if you're just a baseball fan in general, it's always good to see teams come together and step it up for October. You begin to see what players are made of when the playoff crunch comes. You see all stars look like little leaguers and rookies demand the spotlight. It's hard to predict what might happen, and that's the beauty of it.

I grew up with two parents who never really got into sports. I wouldn't sit in front of a TV as a kid and watch football on Sunday afternoons. That just wasn't my dad's thing. Never went to a baseball game, nor a hockey, football, or basketball game. In fact, the first time I went to a hockey game with my dad, it was after college and I had been refereeing ice hockey for years. So, I spent a considerable amount of time during the game explaining the rules to him. Back to baseball though.

It's kind of interesting to think about the art of hitting in baseball. One of the most important statistics for a baseball hitter is the batting average. The batting average is calculated by dividing the number of hits by the number of at bats. According to Wikipedia, "In modern times, a season batting average higher than .300 is considered to be excellent, and an average higher than .400 a nearly unachievable goal." The last player to have successfully hit over .400 for the season was Ted Williams, all the way back in 1941.

As I think through this idea, it's fascinating for me. If I am a baseball player, I am considered successful if I step up to the plate and hit the ball 3 or 4 times out of 10 plate appearances. There are other statistics to factor in, like average with men in scoring position and slugging percentage, but generally, the batting average is a pretty good indicator of a player's success or failure at the plate. Success for hitters means an average of between 30 to 40 percent.

I laugh to myself as I read this. How interesting that player's who make more money with one swing than I will in my entire lifetime are judged on whether they succeed 30 to 40 percent of the time. Can you imagine what the world would look like if those "lesser" professions were judged with the same percentage? Imagine if doctors were successful if only 30 to 40 percent of their patients survived. How about if firemen were able to put out 30 to 40 percent of the fires that they encountered? What kind of a school system would be content with a 30 to 40 percent graduation rate? Talk about lowering the bar.

People might say, "That's not fair, you're comparing apples to oranges." In some ways, they're right, but I still think it's interesting to think about. We love to rationalize or condemn based upon statistics. We can show our support or opposition when we can "prove" something with statistics. We feel somewhat justified when we can do so.

Last year, I had the privilege of going through something called Core Clarity. The basic concept behind it was something that I was familiar with. I took the Clifton StrengthsFinder test years ago. The gist of it is that everyone has a set of strengths that make up who they are, there are 34 basic themes and everyone has all of them, with the emphasis being on the top 5. Core Clarity takes the top 5 strengths and expounds upon how those 5 themes work together in each individual person.

One of the things that the presenter talked about was that often in our society, we rate people on a skill set that doesn't fit them. In other words, we may be rating someone based upon strengths of the supervisor or advisor rather than the individual being rated. At the most basic level, we can ask the question, is it fair to judge someone on the skillset that they have or that they don't have? Can we expect someone to perform at a high level when they are not gifted or equipped with the skills necessary to perform the tasks that they are being judged on?

All of us in our lives have to perform tasks that we are not always comfortable with. Some have to perform tasks that they don't list, those are among the responsibilities of a job. But what would it look like if job descriptions began to morph and evolve based upon the skillset held by those occupying those jobs? What if people began to operate in the places where their gifting lies rather than to constantly feel like they were operating in the place of their weakness?

If we spend any time at all being introspective and performing self-evaluations, we probably have a pretty good handle on the things that we are good at and where our skills lie. If we begin to find places where we can put those skills to work a large percentage of our time, I would guess that our productivity would rise and we would probably find more satisfaction in what we are doing. We will always have to do certain things that are somewhat taxing on us, the things that are required, but how fulfilled would we feel if we were operating in that area a smaller percentage of the time?

The smell of Fall is in the air in some parts of the country. The hunt for October is on and the baseball players will show what they're made of. Some of them will see their batting averages rise while others will see them fall. If you analyze the hitting of every baseball player, you will find that their batting average goes up when they are given certain pitches in a certain part of the strike zone. Those zones would probably be best called their "hot zones." I would gather that their success rate within those zones rises to about 70 or 80 percent, at least. What would happen if they got pitches in that area every single time they stepped to the plate?

Most of us won't ever be professional baseball players. We won't be judged on whether we are successful 30 to 40 percent of the time. But, we can look for our "hot zone," the place where we feel like we're going to operate and function at a higher rate, and do our best to operate in that place the majority of the time. We'll always be responsible to "git r done" in certain places, but if we find that high functioning place in our lives, I can bet that we will find more fulfillment and less stress in the things that we do.

Raw, Real, and Authentic

I’ve come to this point in my life when I am just really getting tired of all the crap. While not yet 40, I don’t know that I can blame it on a mid-life crisis, but if this is the worst way that it manifests itself in me, some sort of crisis, than I think I’m doing pretty good.

Growing up, I was not really the rebellious type. I was the questioning type, always wanting, no, demanding answers. Things needed to make sense to me and if they didn’t, I wouldn’t hesitate to ask the questions that everyone was thinking but no one really had the courage to ask themselves. In adulthood, this has manifested itself through my strengths and their union together. With my core strengths, I have been labeled a stabilizer/de-stabilizer, which is really fitting. I wear the label proudly, no shame whatsoever. After all, the world needs to be destabilized now and again.

As I’ve mentioned ad nauseum in this blog, 2011 has been an atrocious year for me. I’ve almost grown tired of saying it because I feel like a broken record. At the same time, I feel the need to continue to write about it because I could never have scripted it, that’s how unbelievable some of the moments have been. But I know that it has not been just my year that has sucked, it’s been lots of people’s experience this year.

A friend of mine, a friend whose marriage I performed, recently got a divorce. In this age of technology, I knew something was wrong simply based on Facebook alone well before I knew the details. News travels fast, whether good or bad, and when I found out about everything that was happening my heart just dropped. There was the selfish part of me that thought about my track record as a pastor, having only performed a few weddings, just one divorce brought my average down considerably. But I really got over that in a hurry, I instead began to feel it so deeply, almost as if it was me going through it.

Recently, a friend of this friend began a blog. It seems that she had recently been divorced as well. She is in her early thirties and had been married nearly 10 years. Her husband had an affair with someone nearly a decade his junior and the marriage was going to end. She started this blog and titled it “The Christian Girl’s Guide to Divorce.” Within her blog, she is raw and honest, genuine and authentic. She is not afraid to allow her emotions to be exposed in all of their rawness, as profane as they may come across. I am sure that people reading it have been shocked. How on earth can a Christian express themselves in so raw of a manner?

As I have grown older, I have had a harder time reconciling the way that some in the Church try to separate the sacred and the secular. It always seemed strange to me. I fully understand that we serve a holy God and that he is perfect. God disdains sin so much that he turned his back on his own son when his son became sin for our sake, for the redemption of humanity. The idea of separating sacred and secular seems as if we are still living under temple law rather than the new law of Christ.

I might not be expressing it properly. What I guess it is that irks me is that we claim that Christ changes people, transforms people, and yet we want them to come join us but leave their crap behind. Check it at the door because there’s no place for it when we worship the Lord. The problem that I see with that is twofold. First of all, if people leave it at the door, they never have the opportunity to bring it before the One who has the power to transform it and bring redemption. The other problem that I see is that if we are careful to restrict what comes in, not allowing people to be real and honest, if they check their “stuff” at the door, should we really be expecting that they will take any of the Truth of God that they might have gained within the walls with them when they leave? I think there might be an even exchange at the door, check it when you come in and then check it when you go out. Leave with what you had and leave what you gained behind.

The Christian world is ready to receive another Christian film that sanitizes reality and conveys it in a white-washed presentation. While I understand the importance of making “family friendly” films, there is certain subject matter that lends itself to that genre. When certain other subject matter is attempted to fit within that genre, it comes across as veiled, contrived, forced, and inauthentic. If you have ever spent any time with policemen, firemen, or football coaches, you know that they can hardly be considered to be among the most sanitized within society. No offense to anyone who might fall within these categories, but many things go on, particularly with language, that can hardly be considered to be “family friendly.”

I recall reading Stephen King’s book On Writing a few years ago and being struck by something he said in regards to character development. I am paraphrasing from memory, but the gist of what I got from what he had written was that writers need to be true to their characters, let the characters tell you where they are going rather than you telling the characters where they are going. Writers need to let their characters act as those characters would really act, not confining them to certain boxes in order for them to fit a specific genre.

This struck me for the same reason that I was struck at the thought of us leaving our “stuff” at the door of the Church, leaving a part of who we are without the opportunity for redemption, untouched by the grace of Jesus. While I wouldn’t condone Christians walking around talking like sailors, I wonder if checking it at the door is the most redemptive way of dealing with it. When we find ourselves in difficult situations, like this Christian woman betrayed by her husband’s infidelity, do we really say, “Well, doggone it, this really stinks, I can’t believe that he would be so unkind to me?” Hardly! I think we might pepper the phrase with words that could hardly be considered family friendly. And it’s not as if God doesn’t know what we’re thinking. Do we honestly think that we are fooling him by disguising our outward words?

There is a deep need within the Church for us to be raw, real, and authentic. I’m pretty sure that God can handle it. To be anything less is to be dishonest. As we begin to share our stories with each other, allowing even the most uncomfortable details to emerge, there is freedom for others in knowing that they are not the only broken ones in the world. Broken people need a place where they can share their brokenness, not hide it. Hiding our brokenness from each other probably means that we’re trying to hide it from God as well. If we’re trying to hide it from him, how can we expect that anything will happen to it?