Beautiful Pain

At the end of the Bible is a little enigmatic book called Revelation. The various attempts at pulling together all that transpires and what it all means have filled many books that have sold many copies (including, alas, the Left Behind series).

But the main actor in the book is clear. It's Jesus. And he appears in many and various forms throughout the book. But the way that he's introduced is a sort of "North Star" towards understanding his character and power as John wants to describe and talk about it throughout the book: he is the lamb who was slain.

The fact that Jesus is resurrected with a glorified body that still bears the marks of his crucifixion has been a source of rich meditation throughout the life of the church. And so here, perhaps, we land at our resting place as we think about pain and as we approach Christmas.

Christians worship the Lamb who was slain, the suffering Servant, the Savior who suffers on behalf of and in place of his people. And the marks of his pain and suffering are not erased when he is perfected but rather are a source of endless worship and celebration. Wounds, glorified. Pain that is not erased but rather gathered in with the eternal beauty and wonder and power and purposes of God.

This is, I think, a foreshadowing of what you and I have to look forward to. Our pain will become our beauty. This is the full redemption of Christ--his wounds, his slain-ness, is a part of who he always will be, forever. And so it will be with us. But they will mark us not as ones defeated but as ones who have overcome, who have won, who have been made wholly wonder-full.

Your pain will become your beauty. This has been secured for us through the one who was born in order to bear all our pain, all our grief, all our sin on himself. He came to suffer pain, to gather all pain onto himself and to clear the way to the High Country. All we must do is accept this great gift, and then hang on to the end.

Garden-Variety Pain

Blogging about pain these past couple of days has made me think a good bit about this fall. The past several months both personally and professionally have felt like a jumbled mix of frustrations, disappointments, challenges and obstacles.

Individually, each of these wouldn't have been a huge deal. But put them all together and I'm starting to wonder what the crap God's trying to teach me in all of it.

Today I was journaling out my frustrations and praying angry prayers. I always feel somewhat conflicted when I pray this way. I have so much to be thankful for, shouldn't I just be counting my blessings? It would seem in a world full of pain that mine is only a minor pile of frustrations and disappointments mingled with some legitimate sadness.

This is when James saved me.

The New Testament book of James starts this way:

2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.

Trials of many kinds. A pastor of mine in Richmond once taught on this passage and he said the way that trials is being described here in the original text is "garden variety" trials. Any kinds of trials.

So today, I complained to God about my piled-up, weed-laden, garden variety trials. And I confessed that I didn't have the faith or courage or patience to "consider it pure joy." I was just frustrated and over it.

I've learned a ton about perseverance and love and faith from my friends Sam and Daniele as they've cared for their daughter Eliza and mourned her death these last several days. But it's good news that I don't have to have someone close to me die to have trials that rate serious ranting...and that God can redeem for my good.

Re: Pain

The other day as I was blogging about how open my friends the Jacksons had been about their struggles with their little girl Eliza, I made this comment:

We hide much of our pain, shame, guilt, and brokenness that needs to be brought out into the light.

I've been thinking about this the past couple of days and I realize that it's clearly a mis-statement. Some of us respond to pain by hiding it. But a quick tour through the blogosphere reveals that this is not always true. There's plenty of pain out there, and plenty of people willing to put it on display.

It seems that there are a couple of equal and opposite errors in regards to how we process our pain. The first is to hide it. The second is to enshrine it. We can become so attached and defined by what the crap has happened to us that our identity can become wrapped up in our pain. I've been hurt, and I'm angry about it, and you can't tell me that I can't be or shouldn't be.

Our tendency towards either of these errors is probably a combination of temperament, culture and family factors.

Jesus encountered people on both ends of the pain-relating spectrum. One woman was so eager to hide that she quickly changed the subject to a politics. One man was so deeply enmeshed in his pain that when Jesus asked him if he wanted to be made well he couldn't answer him.

It would seem that the answer to the important question of what will we do with our pain in many ways dictates what kind of human being we become.

And the Christian answer, it would seem, is a combination of activities all designed to free us from pain becoming our Lord and Master: prayer--honest prayer before God, sharing appropriately in community, asking and extending forgiveness where it is needed, repentance where we sin in response to our pain, walking in obedience as the doctor's prescription for the healing of our souls. Pain makes for a terrible life-orientation. It's a life barely lived.

It is very popular currently to say that pain and suffering is "God's Problem." Nothing could be further from the truth. Suffering is our problem. But the good news about the Christmas story is that God has made it his problem. He comes to get us in the middle of our pain to free us from our pain having the last word on us. He comes to free us from a life barely lived.

That's good news, but it requires decisions on our part. What will you do with your pain?

Eliza

One last post about this powerful story and this tremendous family and then I'll move on, I promise.

Over the past several days there have been some tremendous things spoken about Eliza's life and her family. The funeral yesterday was tremendous and overflowing with power, love, sorrow, joy, truth, music, laughter, hope.

I can't remember who to attribute what to, so let it be hereby noted that the things rolling around in my head that I quote or paraphrase below are either from David Hyman, associate rector at All Saints Church, Steve Breedlove, senior rector, or my dear brother Sam Jackson, who buried his little girl at 2:00 yesterday afternoon and then an hour later stood up in front of several hundred people and gave the most impassioned, gracious, wonderful 8-minute speech I've ever heard.

*What did Eliza teach us? She taught us to hope for heaven.

Most children we recognize as gifts from above but our hopes for them anchor us more fully on this earth: birthdays and graduations and weddings.

But Eliza had all of those things taken from her at birth. And as her body failed her again and again through constant seizures, we along with her family longed for the day when she would be given a perfect body. Eliza taught us to hope for heaven.

*Eliza needed everything and could give us nothing back. There was no thank you, no hugs, none of the things we customarily associate with a healthy, loving relationship. She just needed and needed and needed.

And for that, we loved her.

What a glorious picture of the love our Father in heaven has for us as his people. We are helpless to do much more than to need: love, direction, saving, help, security, faith, hope. We have little to nothing to offer God. And yet he loves us with an impassioned, makes-no-sense kind of love.

*Eliza is home now. Praise God.

If you'd like to give to defray the medical or funeral costs for Eliza, here's the address:

The Eliza Jackson Fund
Trinity School of Durham and Chapel Hill
4011 Pickett Rd.
Durham NC 27705

Funeral Reflections

It would be natural to do this, but especially in light of how parallel our family's lives are, I've been thinking a lot over the weekend about how our friends have handled the pains and joys of caring for Eliza.

The thing that Kelly and I keep coming back to is how open Sam and Daniele have been throughout this whole process. They have been honest with their faith-shaking pains and struggles and they have been honest about their joys and hopes. They seem to have a clear sense that Eliza was a gift from God and like all his gifts this one was meant to be shared.

In the Christian Story about the universe, all was created good but has been marred by rebellion against the Creator. So for me it comes as no surprise but with a great deal of consternation that our culture hides and goes public with all the wrong things. We hide much of our pain, shame, guilt, and brokenness that needs to be brought out into the light. We flaunt and celebrate our rebellion and mis-spent worship that should have never been at all.

Sam and Daniele had a baby that was not expected to live for longer than a handful of days, then maybe weeks, then maybe months. Instead of circling the wagons and drawing the shades and putting up a giant "No Trespassing" sign, they invited community into their lives.

If real humility is thinking rightly about ourselves, then perhaps this was simply a sign of humility. They knew that they would need the help and support of their community to get through the challenges they were bound to face.

In doing so, hundreds of people have been encouraged by this little girl and her family. Literally. I know because my wife is the point person for the funeral today. All weekend long e-mails and phone calls have poured in. Everyone asking, "what can I do?"

Not all pain should be public. And there are plenty of things about Eliza and the challenges of caring for her that no one will ever know about--nor should they. But these dear and deep and wise and humble and hurting people have been gloriously transparent and generous with their little girl. And that has blessed and challenged many of us.

Prayers for Friends

I met Sam Jackson at a sparsely populated park in the fall of 2005, our first fall living in Durham. Our boys were weeks apart. Our wives were both home, pregnant with second children, both girls. They were due a handful of weeks apart. He was attending the same church my brother was at the time. Our boys hit it off. We both loved C.S. Lewis. We exchanged phone numbers.

Many months later, having run into one another perhaps once or twice, we ended up at the same church that they had just recently started attending. Thus began a friendship between two families that has deepened and grown over the past two years. Our little Zoe was just months old. Their little girl, Eliza, was just a few weeks younger, and was not well.

Eliza was born with holes in her brain. This caused uncontrollable seizures. She had basic brain stem function and that was it. She was in a vegetative state. There was little hope that she would live beyond her first week. But she did. They sent her home at ten weeks from the NICU to die. She didn't. Sam and Daniele and Luke loved on her and cared for her and celebrated her through to first birthday. And then, unfathomably, to her second.

The doctors always said that it would be the flu or pneumonia that would probably cause her body to be overworked to the point where it gave up. After nearly three years, that finally happened. Little Eliza Jackson went to be with the Lord today. She is finally free of a body that was never fully functional. Her first steps were in paradise.

Please join me in praying for the Jacksons. While this has been "coming" for nearly three years now, it's still hard, sad, and the grief is heavy.

To read more fully about this tremendous family and how they have labored in faith, hope, and love to care for this little girl, take a look at their blog: dixiejax.

David's Audacity: Gifts, Calling and Competencies

One of the things that strikes me as I read through the Psalms is David's audacity--see Psalm 18 for an example of what I mean.

I was talking with a friend on Friday who was sharing some thoughts about gifts, competencies, and calling. Someone had challenged him recently to consider what it meant to lean into his spiritual gifts rather than the competencies that had been acquired on top of those gifts. In other words, the power was in the core gift given by the Spirit, not in the techniques or skills that had been learned.

And the spark that sets all this in motion, the person explained, is calling. To know that God has put you in this place, at this time, to do this work frees you to lean into the gifting with boldness and power. Calling is the spark that ignites the gift (and competencies) into effective-beyond-expectation work.

It struck me as I considered this that I think this combination of gifting and clear calling is what frees David up to be so incredibly audacious. He knows that God has called him to be king--there was an incredibly unexpected anointing ceremony in his dad's house. As time goes on, he shows himself to be a gifted leader. And of course he acquires some skills along the way.

It takes years upon years for David to finally realize his place as king. But God had called him. And David leaned into the certainty of that call his whole life.

I think so many people wander from job to job unsure of where to go because of a lack of sense of this calling. Most of us have an inkling of our giftedness, have acquired some competencies or skill sets along the way, but we have no idea about what it is that God would have us to do.

Calling is not just reserved for kings or people in ministry. One could be called to computer programming to military service or to doing a cartoon strip.

Sometimes I think that the Lord leads us through years of wandering before we receive our calling--Moses had a life experience of this sort. Sometimes I think we wander unnecessarily because we don't take the time to listen for the voice of the Lord extending a calling to us. Sometime I think he withholds it from us because he knows that we're not ready to receive it yet.

I think that apart from a faithful combination of gifting, calling and competencies, it is almost impossible to be at peace with the work that we do. It is certainly almost impossible to do it with the power and effectiveness that is intended.

Psalming my Way to Christmas

For the bulk of my college years and the years immediately following, Christmas was met with surprise and alarm at how quickly it passed without much genuine reflection or thought. The day itself was often met with panic--like an unexpected visit from a very important house guest.

So about ten years ago or so I began the habit of turning to the Christmas story in Luke once the calendar turned to December. This helped me to at least recognize that the house guest was on his way, whether I was ready or not.

But this year, my sense was that I needed to not return to Luke but rather stay the course in my read-through -the-Bible-in-just-over-four-years book that last time took me about seven or eight years to get through.

So I'm preparing for Christmas in the Psalms this year. And while it's a little more work to have to think "how does this point me to Christmas" it's been a wonderful place to contemplate how the coming of Christ is the fulfillment of all the promises and needs and desires of our hearts.

Consider these passages from Psalm 17 & 18:

Let my vindication come from you;

Show me the wonders of your great love,
you who save by your right hand

Rise up, LORD, confront them, bring them down;

He reached down from on high and took hold of me;
he drew me out of deep waters.

He rescued me from my powerful enemy,
from my foes, who were too strong for me.

I am particularly drawn to the repeated images of God's rescue of David in the Psalms--the rising up, the coming down, the deliberate movements in response to David's plight.

This seems to sum up quite well what Christmas is all about: God comes to get those who are desperately hemmed in by enemies and/or their own folly. These people are on the brink of death and have no resources in and of themselves to save themselves. David seems to be here often. It would seem from the Biblical account that we are here quite often as well (born in that place, even), though many of us would prefer not to consider this too deeply.

Lewis: Screwtape on Time

Yesterday's post motivated me to dig up C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters to find the passage where he shreds the whole notion of "my" time.

A quick caveat for those who are unfamiliar with the book. It's written as a series of letters from an older uncle demon (Screwtape) to his nephew demon (Wormwood) who is assigned to a man who just became a Christian. Uncle Screwtape's job is to help Wormwood get his man away from God ("the Enemy" as Screwtape calls him).

Here's a chunk of the portion on time:

"Men are not angered by mere misfortune but my misfortune conceived as injury. And the sense of injury depends on the feeling that a legitimate claim has been denied...Now you will notice that nothing throws him into a passion so easily as to find a tract of time which he reckoned on having at his own disposal unexpectedly taken from him...

They anger him because he regards his time as his own and feels that it has been stolen. You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption "My time is my own."

Let him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful possesor of twenty-four hours...what he must never be permitted to doubt is that the total from which these deductions have been made was, in some mysterious sense, his own personal birthright.

You have here a delicate task. The assumption which you want him to go on making is so absurd that, if once questioned, even we cannot find a shred of argument in its defense. The man can neither make, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift; he might as well regard the sun and moon as his chattels."

Sabbatical Journey Day 14: Transitioning

Sometimes when I'm really tired and get a good night sleep I'm crankier than I was in my sleep-deprived state. The sleep un-masks how tired I really am.

That was me for most of last week. In my first full week of actual sabbatical (the previous week being Thanksgiving week), I was alternately moody, grumpy, taciturn, checked out and occasionally slightly unpleasant.

I find that when I feel down or out of sorts, the sin that is most recurring is the coveting of my time. I don't want to be generous with "my" time (C.S. Lewis graciously but viciously pulls back the curtain on the whole concept of time being "ours" in Screwtape Letters) when I don't feel like I'm in a settled place.

I think many of us Type-A, slightly over-achiever types have this problem. It probably has something to do with control-freak issues, but that's another post for another day.

It seems that the path to health necessarily goes through this phase. A disturbing number of my students tell me that they like to stay busy because they don't like what comes to the surface when they slow down. Similarly, I don't like to be moody. Left to my own devices, I'd stay busy so that I didn't have to deal with feeling lethargic and weighed down.

But here's the deal: to keep running on a broken leg only exacerbates the problem. I have to work through the grumps to get to the life on the other side.

And the Lord was good to turn things around towards the end of the week. Of course, since he knows me and loves me, the life-line that he tossed me came in the form of community: three tremendous men who contacted me about getting together. It is a humbling and wonderful thing to have real friends.

These conversations seemed unusually rich. Afterward each one a phrase or a word or a piece of the conversation continued to roll around in my head--things that the Lord was trying to show me or wanted me to think about.

And I'm half-way through Lord of the Rings. And I got a Starbucks card in the mail on Saturday from some dear old friends. What more could I possibly ask for?

It's going to be a good sabbatical.

Christmas Music

So I've always loved Christmas music. I get this from my dad, who would start to listen to Christmas music in August if my mother would let him. As it is, we both have adopted Thanksgiving weekend as the official start to Christmas music season.

One thing that I'm recognizing as I listen to Christmas music this week is that more than ever I'm drawn to music that mingles the joy of Christmas with a tone of longing or waiting. "O Come, O Come, Immanuel" has long been one of my favorite Christmas songs. I find myself more than ever longing for music of that ilk.

There seems to be two extreme poles that you could land on during Christmas. On the one hand is a sloppy sentimentalism that glosses over all that's hard or difficult about life or this season in particular. On the other hand is a cynical, nihilistic despair and hopelessness that is equally lazy about engaging all that is good or hopeful about life or this season in particular.

Christian theologians have coined a sweet phrase for the tension that I want to live in during this Christmas season: the already and the not yet. Christmas has already come. Christ has already come, lived, died and rose again. Death and sin and Satan have all been conquered. It is already done.

And yet it is not yet done in terms of our experience of these things. We still wrestle with sin, death, sadness and Satan. Christ has come and he will come again. We live in the time in-between. All the relief and victory that we long to experience has already been secured for us but it has not yet been experienced in all the fullness of joy that we long for.

So I want to live in the already and the not yet this Christmas faithfully, neither lilting towards sentimentalism on the one hand nor hardened cynicism or apathy on the other. There is much to be joyful about: Christ has come! There is much to long for: Christ will come again!

So we celebrate the reality that Christmas is all about the good news of the God who comes to get us. And we also continue to cry out: come, Lord Jesus! And I find that I'm aided in that journey by music that strikes the note of both sides of this coin: the joy of the coming of the Messiah, and the longing for his final return to make all things new, all things well.

About my Nun

So one of the things that I spend most of my days doing on campus is discipling, mentoring, helping students navigate issues of spirituality, dating, leadership, UNC religious studies classes, fantasy football, whatever.

As a student, I had some tremendous IV staff workers who invested in me. It wasn't until about my fourth year out of college that I realized how much I missed having someone older and wiser who talked with me regularly to help me sort through my stuff. I was doing this for students, but didn't have it for myself. I started praying that the Lord would bring someone into my life who might do this for me. But folks like this are tough to come by.

About this time, several IV staff and other folks in ministry that I knew started talking about their nuns. They had recognized this same need in themselves and had somehow gotten connected with a local nun who met with them regularly for spiritual direction. "Where do I get one of those?" I wondered. Is there a Rent-A-Nun place that I could call?

It was actually a couple of years before I found my nun. Doug Stewart is a national InterVarsity spiritual formation guru. He also happened to be in a class I took one summer with InterVarsity. He also happens to be from North Carolina and has a soft spot for all things Tar Heel. He is old and wise in the Lord and in ministry. He is also an extrovert who also has a deep spiritual life--something that I was despairing of ever finding.

So Doug and I have talked about monthly for nearly five years now. I am spoiled to have such a tremendous resource speaking into my life. He is my official sabbatical supervisor, which means that our interactions will be more frequent over the next three and a half months. I'm booking a visit to see him later this winter. There are few reasons why I would travel to Chicago in the winter. Doug is one.

We talked yesterday. He spoke wisdom (as he always does)--this time about my sabbatical: Take the first month to unwind. Read a fun book. Don't try to do too much or be too intense to start with. Just enjoy the Lord. We'll do more soul-work later. Enjoy Christmas and your kids. Start to exercise, it will help release some of the anxiety you carry around in your body and soul. Go Heels.

Thanks goodness for my nun.

Sabbatical Journey Day 10: Automechanic Spirituality

So my car has barely started at every start-up for about two months now. Literally, every time I started it I wondered if it was going to be the last time it would start. It kept starting, so I kept putting off taking it into the shop.

But sabbatical is a time when I'm cleaning out my to-do list. I went to DMV on Monday and renewed my driver's license--which I expected to eat up the next three and a half months of my sabbatical but surprisingly only took twenty minutes. Buoyed by such an expected gift, I took the car in today and had them look at it.

They called me an hour after I dropped it off. The battery, they reported, was so low on juice that they were surprised that it had started for me this morning. "A lawnmower takes more juice to get started than what you had left in your battery," Chris said at Auto-Pro-to-Call.

Given that it's been barely-starting for two months, I've wondered how long it's been that low.

It strikes me that I'm as inclined to keep running my car as I am to keep running myself. As long as the car starts, I'm not all that interested in addressing the fact that it sounds iffy. As long as I can get up out of bed each day, I'm generally not all that inclined to stop and tend to my soul.

This sabbatical pit-stop for me is really about paying attention to the noises of my soul and re-charging. It's not as quick and easy as swapping out a battery. But for that I'm strangely thankful today.

Hosea's Prayer

I just finished the Old Testament book of Hosea. The first couple chapters are most famous--that's where God tells Hosea to marry a prostitute as a metaphor for how his relationship with his people has degenerated.

Over the next several chapters, God lays out his case against his people with warnings as to the consequences to come should they not repent.

But in the final chapter (Hosea 14), God through Hosea gives the people of Israel (who have forgotten him and hence have forgotten how to pray) a great prayer of repentance to pray:

Return, Israel, to the LORD your God.
Your sins have been your downfall!

Take words with you
and return to the LORD.
Say to him:
"Forgive all our sins
and receive us graciously,
that we may offer the fruit of our lips.

Assyria cannot save us;
we will not mount warhorses.
We will never again say 'Our gods'
to what our own hands have made,
for in you the fatherless find compassion."

This is a tremendous prayer, worth making your own. First, the invitation: to return to God and recognize that our sins have been our downfall.

Secondly, for those of us who have a hard time speaking honestly about what we've done and where we've been wrong, the Scripture here generously offers us some words, a scaffolding to build a prayer around.

We ask for forgiveness. We ask to be welcomed back into his family, into his presence. We offer to him our mis-spent worship--this re-routing of our worship away from all the wrong things towards the God we were made to worship.

And in the final stanza, a tremendous chance for us to get specific. Assyria cannot save us; we will not mount war horses. We will never again say 'Our gods' to what our hands have made.

Here, you might insert what you look to for importance, significance, salvation: your financial situation (many are recently realizing the impossibility of salvation found in Wall Street), your GPA, your gifts or abilities or intelligence or friendships or rabid independence or whatever. We don't build wooden idols with our hands in our culture, but we certainly have no shortage of attempts at creating our own gods.

And lastly, all of this is offered up to the God who's character is affirmed in the final line: in you the fatherless find compassion. This is the God who's family we're being grafted into through this prayer. In a world full of broken families, God has compassion on the fatherless, the motherless, the ones who come from dysfunction, abuse, brokenness. We are invited into a community, a family, that is whole and wholly good and wholly for our good.

This is repentance: re-aligning ourselves with the realities of who we are, who God is, and being honest about where and how we have turned away from him; all of this for the purpose of being restored into his family, into the Relationship we were made for.

NIght Driving

Something magical about being a kid and driving at night, isn't there? Usually you're up past your bed time, driving to or from somewhere wonderful. The car has a glorious, rhythmic hum to it. Lights and cars and trucks go by. You're safe and warm and drowsy and all is right with the world.

I think that there's something that points to what true faith looks like in the trust that a child has in their parents as they sleep in the back seat of a car at night.

So we left from Cheasapeake, Va, home of Kelly's parents (a.k.a. Nanny and Grampy) on Saturday night in order to beat the traffic rush on I-85. There were ten miles of single-lane misery waiting for all us I-85 travelers just south of South Hill, and we knew that if we waited until Sunday we'd be stuck in some seriously snarled traffic.

As we passed through rural southeastern Virginia, I caught a glimpse of a guy sweeping up in a laundromat. I instinctively felt pity. What kind of life is it to be sweeping up in the laundromat in Lacrosse, Va, at 8:30 p.m. on the Saturday after Thanksgiving?

All my worldview tells me that by virtue of my educational opportunities, my travels, my life experiences, my work, and my general socio-economic status, I have a vastly superior life as compared to anyone who would be sweeping up at a laundromat at 8:30 p.m. on a Saturday evening in Lacrosse, Virginia.

But as I've thought about this further, I've realized that I must not be too hasty. Quality of life is a tricky thing to measure and snapshots seldom tell the whole story. Moses, David and Jesus all spent long years doing menial tasks. And many today who live much more richly than I do by financial standards live much more poorly than I do in terms of the quality of life.

So I think my job is to bless the guy at the laundromat. I need to do what I can to ensure that there's opportunity for people in our country to pursue education and jobs that they enjoy. And in my matrix of what that looks like, there has to be room to include sweeping up the laundromat--even as I think that I'd feel better about that if he was cleaning up the laundromat that he owned and not for someone else.

Sabbatical Journey Day 3: A Sabbatical Narrative

In his book Leading Change John Kotter urges business-types who are trying to make a major change in the direction of their company to "create short-term wins." The idea here is that early success boosts morale and enthusiasm for the changes that you're trying to implement.

So on Monday, after 9 days of being sick, I decided the troops (meaning me) needed to a short-term sabbatical win. So I went to Barnes and Noble and purchased my very first me-owned copy of Lord of the Rings. If that's not a win, I'm not sure what is.

Then I went to the doctor's office. She gave me the gift of an unexpected hour to read the aforementioned recently purchased Lord of the Rings book by calling me back an hour after my appointment was scheduled.

But at least I have bronchitis. If I'm going to feel sick and crappy, I want there to be some legitimacy to it. I got some antibioitics (why is everyone so anti biotics all the time?) and a weird inhaler-thing.

A couple things about the new-school inhalers. First, they're not the same puff-things that the cool asthmatic kids who smoked back in elementary school used to use. Nor are they the same puff-things that the nerdy, sickly asthamatic kids used to use. I got this real cute purple and pink disc-shaped thing that you might see on a commercial on Oxygen--not that I've actually watched any Oxygen in the 48 hours I've had cable, I promise.

I basically pull a small lever back on and then inhale deeply at a little port. You gotta' rinse your mouth out afterwards or else you get a yeast infection in your mouth. Nothing says pass the turkey and stuffing like an oral yeast infection.

Secondly, the inhaler is clearing out my lungs using a steroid. Which explains 1. why I felt like I was running on a Vault Energy drink until 2 a.m. Monday night and 2. how I lifted that semi-trailer off the trapped kid yesterday morning.

Yesterday afternoon I finally got my couple hours at Starbucks. Great to have un-hurried, un-harried Jesus time. I worked on a pre-sabbatical worksheet given to me by my sabbatical supervisor and spiritual director Doug Stewart (more on him forthcoming). The whole purpose of this time is becoming more and more clear: restore my soul by going deep with Jesus.

Now if we can just heal up two pink-eyes, two ear-infections, a couple of poked-through teeth, my bronchitis, some ebola virus, a case of tetanus, an ingrown toe-nail and overcome a couple bad hair days, we'll be ready to drive to Nanny and Grampy's and celebrate a little Thanksgiving tomorrow.

Sabbatical Journey Day 2: Further Proof that I Have the Best Wife Ever

So we don't have cable. This was a joint decision before our marriage and it was more of a values decision than anything else. We wanted our home to be full of guests and laughter and music and reading rather than the dull (albeit warm) glow of the television.

For my part, the only thing I care to watch are sports, particularly football, which by and large can be found on free t.v.

As we've had kids and are working to live on 1 & 1/4 salary, this is both a values and an economics decision. Our kids go most weeks without watching any t.v. (until weekend football games with me) and so far we've managed to work it so that Kelly can stay home with the kids.

We've never been Nazi's about this. Whenever we're with family or friends who have cable, we're as excited as anyone to see what we can find among the several million or so channels. And our kids are shocked to see that the t.v. can actually work without fuzz, interference, or having to adjust the rabbit ears.

But yesterday, Santa came early in a Time Warner truck.

Because while I mostly don't miss having cable, college basketball season has just tipped off. And that's the one sport where I can't get most of the games on our rabbit ears. And so for an early Christmas present, Kelly has hooked us up with digital cable for the duration of my sabbatical.

Over the next four months, Time Warner digital cable will deliver to my very television college football Bowl games and tons of college hoops. When my sabbatical ends at the end of March, college basketball season will be entering it's final (free broadcast t.v.) stages of the March Madness journey. And the only thing left on cable will be baseball, which is about as interesting as watching toe-fungus grow.

Further proof (as if any were needed) that I do, indeed, have the world's greatest wife.

Sabbatical Journey Day 1

All growing up, my mom used to scurry around cleaning and stressing out in the hours leading up to our vacation. This made no sense to me. Why are we stressing out to hurry up and rest?

Then last week hit. And I had a couple of major tasks to get done before I could go on sabbatical. And I got a nasty cold. And all week long I fretted over my need for naps that meant the tasks kept getting bumped back and back and back--and with them, my start date to rest.

So here I am, sabbatical journey, day one, just a couple days tardy. But my cold, far from running its' natural course and moving on, is still in full bloom. And I'm particularly grumpy about it. This is not how sabbatical is supposed to start.

So I'm going to the doctor this afternoon at 2:15 instead of hanging out at Starbucks. At least for today I don't have to worry about agoraphobia: fear of wide open spaces.

Perhaps this is sabbatical lesson #1: what happens to my internal world when my plans don't work out like I want them to?

I would be remiss if I didn't note this special day: Davis' 5th bithday is today. And not only do I love the kid in the way that all healthy parent-child relationships should, I genuinely and really like the kid. His baseline personality is sweet, playful, earnest, fun, enthusiastic, eager to help and a joy to be around. This Saturday we had ten of his little buddies over for a party--a great little crew of boys that are sweet friends.

I know that we'll have ups and downs, as we will with all our kids. But let it be noted, on the 5th annual celebration of his birth, that I'm ridiculously proud of my little boy...who's growing up so fast.

Identity Bonus Track: Considering Social Networking

So I didn't talk about this at Chapter Retreat, but the issue of Facebook and blogging and the like and how that affects our understanding of our identity has had me thinking over the past several days.

Let me first off say that I obviously think that social networking sites have benefits. I hope that all six of my ardent followers are encouraged by my blog posts. As I'm winding down into sabbatical, I'm glad to keep up with folks, especially my students, via Facebook.

But at the same time, the dangers of Facebook and blogging and the even more questionable benefits of the creation of avatars for stuff like Second Life is fairly significant.

There is something innately good about my inability to be the person that I want to be in my own strength. There is something to the jarring dissonance between the voices in my head that demand perpetually perfect performance and the reality that I cannot deliver such a thing that creates a holy dissatisfaction. When I am discontent with my life lived on my own strength, it presses me to continually seek for something deeper, more real to live my life for.

What social networking sites like Facebook allow you to do, however, is to spin a "you" that begins to actually live out the unhealthy demands in your head. You can image-manage yourself to be who you wish you really were...or who you think other people wish you were. It is much easier to lie to yourself and to other people that you are much more than you actually are. The holy dissatisfaction with life lived on your own is easier to numb.

So while I hope to continue to regale all six of you with my wit and wisdom, I also want to be aware of the innate dangers of trying to present myself as something that I'm not. Or as someone that I might want to be, but would be fatally destructive to my soul were I to actually attain it.

The original temptation in the Garden of Eden was that humans might be like God. This, it seems, is our perpetual temptation, especially as it pertains to our own sense of who we are, our identity.

We all long for second life, a new name. Most of us seek it in all the wrong places, try to conjure it up on our own. Jesus offers it to us, full of mercy and grace and truth. Let us press on to know and trust in Him, to follow Him. He loves us and he knows the way. Really.

Identity Part 3: Fighting for Your Identity

So here's what I challenged my students to do this week, and I'll invite you in on this as well.

Take a note card or a journal with you for the next 2-3 days, maybe longer if you need it. Begin to really listen to the voices in your head and write them down. What are the doubts or fears or judgments or anxieties or burdens that they speak to you? Jot all of them down over the course of the next several days. Begin to be in tune to the stuff that goes on just beneath the surface that actually drives more of your life than you currently are aware of. Bringing that stuff to the light is the first step towards being able to live truly freely.

After a couple of days of capturing these voices on paper, step back and evaluate them. What do these voices tell you about what it takes for you to be valuable or successful? What are the places of particular anxiety or pride or stress? Are there some repeated patterns? What are the names that you've given to yourself? Where do those names come from?

Looking at my voices, it's not that my identity is in one particular place, it's that it's clearly based in how I perform, mostly in relation to people. That's where I'm tempted to draw my identity from. So your voices might not point you to the specific place where you're currently drawing your identity from, but they will reveal to you perhaps the bigger pattern that needs to be addressed.

After several days of capturing these voices in a journal or on a notecard, and once you've done some initial evaluation of what that might mean, it's time to look at Scripture. The Greek word for "repentance" in the NT means literally "to change your mind." This is what needs to happen. The Lord needs to change your mind about who you are and what voices get to define you.

Read Romans 1-8 and all of Galatians, and make a new list: write down all of the names and titles that God gives to his people. What does the Scripture say about who you are, now that you are in Christ? These are your new names, your real new names, that have been offered to you free of charge in your union with Christ. This is your identity. All you have to do is live into that list, and ask the Lord to help you let go of your current list. To put off the old self and put on this new self, as Paul often puts it.

I'm praying for my students now as several of them have told me that they're doing this exercise this week. Praying that our identity found in Christ might free them (and me) to live life the way that we all intuitively long for but so few of us actually find.