A Story About Home...

She ran like a phobic woman fighting for her life anytime she came face to face with subjects that were not Calvary Chapel approved. She was hysterical in her over protection and in her religion. She kept us in a bubble, she hid us from the truth, and she left us to find our way through her dark. Sometimes I felt held captive for her comfort. She held our family together, but perhaps for all the wrong reasons.

We've cut her a lot of slack over the years because she's dead, but she talked to God like he was our personal genie obligated to grant our every wish so long as we prayed persuasively enough. There were times we dared God not to care for us by intentionally stepping beyond our means. We were told He would always treat us nice because He loved us. Apparently the Father chastises those whom He loves meant nothing in our home; perhaps because it meant nothing to our church. Grace was synonymous with excuse. Love was a word dripping with guilt and scorn. And mercy is the only word I use for having made it out alive.

I look deep into myself and find that I am a boy with mommy and daddy issues. While there are those that sing their praises I am left standing in dumb founded awe covered in scorched marks and battle scars. I still bleed from wounds long calloused over and I can't seem to keep the cry of my heart quiet long enough to make it through just one day without thinking of those bastards.

With the best of intentions she threw smoke bombs and covered our mouths with duct tape in hopes that our family secrets wouldn't come out. That the outside world wouldn't know that we desperately needed help. Inside she bobbed and weaved and used guilt as a finely honed weapon to scare us into keeping quiet. At times she simply stood between us and the beast, so it wouldn't seem so bad. And while I understand she did the best she could to keep us together, I understand she did it because she was frightened to lose everything. She was frightened to admit that she made a mistake. She was frightened -perhaps- because she loved him.

She painted the walls with barn yards and cows. Sun flowers made everything right. The quaint country theme somehow made her heart tranquil; made her accept the mess. She was hiding, like all of us, in a fantasy. She held the church tight. It made everything a test. It showed her that God was on her side. She told them what they wanted to hear, so she passed their test and received their blessing while four little ones were left to figure out how to survive on their own.

These people, I can't seem to get them out of me. They still haunt me, and all I want is to just let go.

Growing More and More Numb to You

I have a long way to go to truly be rid of you in myself. I have been pulling out the hooks and threads you left behind for years now. There have been times when I tried to offer you peace and a safe place to stay under my skin; thinking that this time I'll be okay with the fractured pieces I hide beneath the surface.

By God's mercy and by God's grace you never welcomed my white flag. You kept me fighting, and in fighting you kept me from making the gravest mistake of my life; calling you home. I've traveled lifetimes from you, and the further I go...it never seems far enough.
I don't know how many times I've promised you safe passage through my mind, and I apologize for that. I'm not ready. Not until I rip you from my heart and shatter all influence you hold over me, and not until I can love without you on my shoulders.

Though I'm slowly finding strength, and growing increasingly more numb to you, I hate that even though you are gone, in many ways you're still right here.

Coffee Break

I like my coffee strong and black. Sometimes I like it with a little Irish Cream just to mix things up. But do you know what I wish my coffee lacked? That mandatory ruler that seems to come with every cup to measure my manhood.

I grew up where the way you drink your coffee defines how much of a 'man' you are. Growing up in the Calvary Chapel scene (thank you Lord for delivering me from evil) drinking coffee was a manly art. It was a marker of just how much of a man you were. The blacker and the stronger you were able to drink your coffee, the more of a man (a good man) you were. Which, in hindsight, makes perfect sense since the Calvary Chapel I attended in Hanford, California, didn't really have any other way to truly mark out a man. (Yes we had 'be a man' Men's Conferences, but faith and practice were truly two different things).

I have also worked in environments where drinking coffee strong -and bad- enough to put hair on your chest, or kill you, is considered a sign of a man who can be trusted and counted on. I cannot begin to tell you the number of stories I have heard from grizzled old angry men who recount drinking coffee so strong and so bad that it would have eaten a hole in the side of a U.S. Navy war vessel. It is as if somehow this strange ability to drink crap has made them good men.

I can drink strong black coffee with the rest of the pack. I grew up with bad coffee, and it has grown on me. Yet I am not quite certain if I am ready to allow that to be any kind of indicator of how much of a man, a good man, I am.

I have made some serious mistakes in my life. Big ones. Awful ones. I have hurt people whom I loved dearly; both intentionally and (more often than not) unintentionally. I have shipwrecked myself and my relationships with others on more occasions than I'd like to confess in this place. I have made people angry, I have made people cry, and I have made people hurt. I, despite my ability to drink swill, am not a good man.

However, I have owned up to the things I have done in my life. I have offered apologies, attempted to make amends, asked for forgiveness, and have worked -despite the initial reactions of some whom I have hurt- to restore what I have broken. I know what it is to have a repentant and contrite heart, and I would argue that it is these very things that, if anything could, would define me as a good man.

Still, I am not a good man. Not as far as we could define good. I am, however, a redeemed and forgiven man. And I am so not because of anything I have done, but rather because of what Christ has done. In laying down His life for my sin, and rising for my Salvation, He atoned for my sin and redeemed me for Himself.

The good I have done in my life has been because of what Christ has done, and is doing, for me. It has nothing to do with the coffee I drink. Coffee that is strong enough to strip paint from walls will never be strong enough to strip my sin from me.

If you want to define me as a good man, do so because I have owned up to what I have needed to own up to. Do so because I have done something about those things I have owned. But do so knowing that I do these things because of what Christ has done for me ( i.e., regeneration, faith, redemption, sanctification, and one day glorification), not because of what is in my coffee cup.

Now, excuse me as I add a little Irish Cream to my mug.