2023-06-23T19:33:29+00:00

Bowling Alone

June 23, 2023June 25, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I read that more people are bowling, but leagues are suffering. The reason is because we are bowling alone!??! Bowling alone. Have you ever seen those social media posts that say, “tell me you’re ____ without telling me you’re ____.” Tell me your society is busted without telling me your society is busted: Bowling alone is increasing while bowling together is down.

I recognize that relationships are out of fashion. Our religion is individuality and self-reliance. The main tenet of the social contract is superficiality. I’m fine, it’s fine, everything is fine. Even when, especially when, I’m not and it’s not. Membership is suffering everywhere, because commitment is suffering everywhere. This seems like a relatively insignificant consequence of modern life. Who really cares if we don’t commit to institutions through such an antiquated concept as membership? Maybe. But the list of problems with bowling alone is infinite.

But most, if not all, of these problems can be traced back to a self-obsessed view of the surrounding world. How do you make me feeeel? How does it make me feel? What are you giving me? Are you feeding me enough of what I want? If the answer to any of these is less than positive, treating me like I deserve to be treated, I will move on and never look back.

Close relationships need friction to grow – up and down. Beautiful flowers we can see and enjoy, but also the kind of roots that go deep enough to withstand all kinds of weather. Mark Manson writes, “Greater commitment allows for greater depth. A lack of commitment requires superficiality.”

The Angel and I, we know things about each other, love things about each other, that no one else sees. We only see them because we have committed to any terrain, any obstacles. We only see them because we committed to each other, regardless of…well, anything. Our roots go very, very deep. We bowl together.

Community is an inherently unselfish activity; a community is a selfless organism. We give up certain rights, privileges, and responsibilities for others to gain certain rights, privileges, and responsibilities. The illogical part is that, in becoming smaller, we find a new significance and value that we couldn’t have dreamed otherwise. Illogical, but absolutely true. I sacrifice the ability to date any and every other woman, when I say yes to the Angel, but that sacrifice is hardly loss, considering the knowing, intimacy and love we have built over 20+ years.

When we join a bowling league, we give up some flexibility and individuality, but we have partners, teammates. When we’re not there, we are missed. How many spaces care if we don’t show up? If no one knows my name at the mega church, no one will know my name when I’m not there. There’s a humongous difference between “Where’s that guy that sat there 2 weeks ago?” and “Where’s Chad? He doesn’t usually miss. I’ll text him, see if he’s ok.”

I’ve believed that I am an island, that I can do it myself, and I’ve been way too proud to admit when I can’t. I’ve hurt my back more times than I can count moving furniture rather than call somebody to help. But I don’t believe that anymore. Instead of disappearing when my heart or spirit breaks, I make some calls and tell the truth. All of it. And the dark periods get shorter, more manageable, less dark.

I wish we’d tear up that social contract, shred the pages with all the lies of isolation as virtue, and write a new one. We can start creating a new world right now, today, but none of that happens by ourselves, alone in a cave. This is something we can only do together.

Baby Steps

June 20, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

There is this Japanese concept called Kaizen, where small, nearly imperceptible, steps stack up and we find that we are miles from where we began. Usually, we decide we need to change something (exercise, food, any pattern/habit you can think of) and jump into the deep end. Our diet is bad, we feel like garbage, so we cut out carbs, sugar, soda, AND dairy. We are healthy and awesome, for 15 minutes, and then we binge on all of the things we recently excised. We’re stuck on the couch, maybe we’ve never worked out before, so we commit to going to the gym, deciding to lift heavy weights every day for 3 hours/day. We are strong and believe our shirts are much tighter around the arms, we are fit and ripped. Until the morning of day 3, when we’re in so much pain we can’t put pants on or brush our teeth, and that’s the end of that.

Kaizen laughs at this “strategy” – we’ll call this method Foolish. In the diet example, if every day we are eating an entire package of Oreos, today we eat that package minus one. We can do that easily enough, so we do. We throw the extra one away. Then tomorrow, we eat the package minus 2. And so on. But the time we even consider going a day without Oreos, we’ve already had 30ish successes and are feeling quite good about our chances.

In the Foolish paradigm, we fail, fall off wagons, and end up worse than when we started (mostly because we have yet another false start and the automatic negative voices in our heads have more evidence of our lack of will power.) We totally bought the lies of no pain, no gain. If it’s not, at least, uncomfortable (searing pain is much much better) it’s not worth doing.

But Kaizen takes time. Sometimes lots and lots of time. We barely notice just how far we’ve come, but we are completely transformed. The pounds stay off, the gym is a lifestyle, we read, learn, grow, our relationships are stronger, we are more flexible and consistent, we are new.

In a culture whose religion is instant gratification, Kaizen doesn’t play well. We don’t want to deadlift the bar for a month to fine tune our form, we’d rather load it up until our spines bend and crack and we break. We don’t want to lose 1 pound this week when we can lose 10 with snake oil supplements and the latest trend in thermogenic diarrheal cleansing. We don’t want Meditation for Beginners, 1-5 minutes a try for a thousand tries before we level up to 6-10 minutes, we’d rather lock ourselves in a closet for an excruciating hour once.

We’ve exchanged patience for boredom. Small, consistent growth is boooooring. Small, consistent growth is also awesome and lasting.

[Of course, some things require drastic immediate change to save your life. Kaizen is not the best choice for heroin addiction or alcoholism. There is no weaning off an extramarital affair. Some things must be amputated now, with a swift motion. We are not talking about those things.]

If our marriage is lukewarm and we are drifting apart, losing our connection, maybe a monthlong intensive 1-on-1 immersive experience is counterproductive and will magnify our small annoyances and increase the space between us. Instead, let’s turn our phones off and have dinner tonight, just tonight. Then again next week (or even next month), then maybe twice. Maybe we start to look forward to it, maybe we begin to remember why we got together in the first place. Or if we’ve lost physical touch and intimacy, committing to a weekend sexfest might not be the best path. Maybe if we hold hands in the car on the way to pick the kids up, or a quick kiss on the cheek goodbye, would be more effective to tearing down those walls.

The walls won’t come down today or tomorrow or next months, but the relatively comfortable baby steps continue, steady and slow, until those walls are down and we’re heading out to that sexfest with our special people 35 pounds lighter with thick arms and a robust meditation practice, not missing the Oreos even a little.

Bones Brigade

June 14, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I’m at the beach right now – well, not at the beach right now – I’m at the hotel in a Delaware beach town. While the rest of my family sleeps, I am in the common area writing. This weekend is Father’s Day, it’s my second favorite Sunday of the year to give a talk, so I’m working.

But while we’re here, I watched a documentary on Amazon called Bones Brigade: An Autobiography, about a revolutionary skateboarding ‘team’ (probably more accurately called a skateboarding family.) I grew up with the VHS tapes and Thrasher magazine, so I am very familiar with skateboarders like Tony Hawk, Steve Caballero, and Mike McGill, and the Bones Brigade.

Of course I knew the skating, the tricks, the video games, the impact and artwork, but as usual, that is only a small part of the story. In fact, they’re the least compelling part of the story. Lance Mountain and Rodney Mullen (the ones I didn’t know as well) were insecure and damaged, and the damage didn’t make them any less beautiful. What this film accomplished extraordinarily well, was to detail this time for these people – the highs & lows, the glory AND the heartbreak, the 1st place finishes as well as the times each quit and returned home. The depth and texture of reality made them even more beautiful, if that’s possible.

I think that’s what makes a person like ex-President Trump so difficult to embrace. He curates an image without pain, self-doubt, or flaws. He is only bombastic confidence and success, and that makes him appear like a caricature, like he’s attending a masquerade party where this is what a “man” says and does. I don’t know Donald Trump, and I know to mention his name in any context invites rage. But yesterday, he was in a courtroom to plead ‘not guilty’ to 37 counts and was described as humble and downcast, eyes down and hands folded in his lap. This snapshot of brokenness did what nothing else has, ever: humanized him. (Now, last night he was back to the character, so who knows?) He was far more relatable in the courtroom than he has ever been on a stage or television screen.

Maybe what made the Bones Brigade so honest and open with their fragilities and imperfections was the love they had for each other. Or maybe it was the reverse. Maybe they loved each other into vulnerability and authenticity, or maybe their vulnerability and authenticity opened the door into this deep love. It’s hard to imagine a football or baseball team that would have held Rodney Mullen with such kindness, grace and respect, or that would have been a family to him, where he was, who he was, regardless of his place in today’s competition. All of the members spoke with protective reverence of both he and Hawk as they both made the decision to not win as much, or at least not make winning the only goal.

All of these dumb cult documentaries I watch always leave us with a question: How does this happen? How do people get caught up in this insanity? And the answer is always the same, we’re all looking for community and relationship, and when we find it, (hopefully it’s a ground-breaking skateboarding family and not some crazy religious leader who only wants to sleep with the young girls in the group), we lean in. I’m pretty sure former President Trump doesn’t have a circle like that, who will accept him unconditionally, protect and walk with him – politics might not be the best place to find it. But these boys/men sure did, and they changed so many of us by simply building a home and letting us watch.

Last Times

June 5, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

So I had this pet rabbit (I can’t even tell you how depressing it was to change the word “have” to “had”) for over 9 years. Her name was HoneyBunny. The Angel named her, and I loved it because Tim Roth’s character in Pulp Fiction called his special lady (Amanda Plummer) Honey Bunny, and I can always hear him say, “I love you, Honey Bunny,” in my head. Bunnies live 5-7 years, it says on cards at pet stores. They live much fewer in the wild, but in houses, there are far fewer predators. Ours live forever, in rabbit years.

Smoothie lived to be over 11. We asked the vet if he looked good for 11, and he answered, incredulously, “I don’t know.” He had never seen one that old, which made him in GREAT shape.

I work from home, so I was the primary caregiver for HoneyBunny. Every day for over 9 years, I let her out of her cage, feed & water her, change her litter box, and love her. Thursday was the last day I did any of those things. I let her out and she went under the ottoman, as was her recent practice. I gave her lettuce and treats on a plate under there. Then, around 4, she had an ‘episode’ that I can’t accurately describe. I held her tightly while my boys called local-ish veterinarians. We finally found one to see her by the time the Angel came home, and went there immediately.

She fell asleep in my hands, with the Angel stroking her ears and back. Of course it was horrible, but way too many pass alone, I’m grateful she had 4 hands on her with care and love. She deserved at least that much.

At home, I dug a hole to place her in and watered it with my tears.

Now, why I tell you all of this is because of Thursday morning, when I let her out and gave her the last treat I’d ever give. Sometimes we know when the last times are…

Friday morning Samuel went to the Annville-Cleona high school as a student for the last time. Last night he and his friends said goodbye to a young man who came as a foreign exchange student and was leaving as a close friend.

And others we don’t. How often do I reference Genesis 28:16, “Surely the Lord was in this place and I was unaware?” It’s a serious danger to live these beautiful lives of ours asleep, walking through the days & moments in a daze, oblivious to the fact that the ground on which we’re walking and the people we walk alongside, is all holy. I’d like to think I spoke to her with kindness and intention many many many many more times than I was absent or in a hurry or treating her like she was a nuisance, under my feet or chewing cords, boxes, and furniture. I’d like to hope I was as good to her as she was to me.

The message is always the same – God has so graciously given these blessings to us, we need to stay alert, keep showing up expecting wonder and beauty, keep our eyes open to/for this extraordinary grace.

Yes, she was just a rabbit, but if only you knew her, you’d know there was nothing “just” about her. And now the cage she slept in is empty and I miss her. This is the deal – to love something or someone means, at some point, it’ll hurt, it’ll break our heart into a bazillion pieces. Those pieces are a wonderful gift. She’s gone, but I had her for a long time, forever it rabbit years. My heart is broken but it grew 9 sizes while she was here. I’m really thankful.

I loved that HoneyBunny, and I love her still.

Round Here

May 30, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/1 Comment

The site prompt today is asking if I remember life before the internet. Yes, I do. For some reason, I’m often very nostalgic lately, so at those times that life B.I. seems preferable. Whether the time actually was more simple, or I was, doesn’t really matter in my head.

I like to put together jigsaw puzzles. Don’t ask me if I do that on an app – you already know the answer. I still read physical books, still turn pages. Now that I think of it, it’s mostly for the same reason. When life gets noisy and heavy, finding pieces that fit perfectly (or opening a book and turning pages) turns that volume down. These small acts reduce the complexity of everything that surrounds me. It’s a little like that aphorism: a journey of a million miles begins with a single step. We can’t finish a puzzle now, we can only give our time and focus to finding the next piece.

The puzzle on the dining room table is one called Rock ‘n’ Roll, and is made up of artists, album covers, ticket stubs, and instruments. It’s pretty good puzzle artwork, the overwhelming sadness in Kurt Cobain’s eyes is obvious and as heartbreaking on my table as it was in real life. There is Ray Charles, The Beatles & The Stones, Joan Jett, and Kiss to name only a few. There is also the album cover from the 2nd best album ever recorded: August & Everything After, by Counting Crows. (The best is, of course, The Queen Is Dead.)

So now I’m listening to the live version of August & Everything After. It’s the whole thing, in order, and it’s unusual in that Counting Crows live versions are mostly unrecognizable from the studio album tracks. You have to know the lyrics to know Mr. Jones at a concert to realize it’s Mr. Jones, but you still can’t sing along. This particular release, though, sounds like the original, but…extra. They’re a terrific band, even as they sort of under-achieved, never building on the perfection of this debut. But how could they, honestly? I am sometimes angry at the Goo Goo Dolls. I want them to make an entire great full-length album, and they don’t, they won’t. It’s like an act of rebellion. But Counting Crows made this 100% A+ masterpiece, and they deserve a pass forever.

Round Here is the first track and makes me cry every time I hear it (with both hands, it’s so sad and so beautiful. Like the great philosopher Rob Base once said, “joy and pain.”)

My wedding Anniversary was Saturday, and my son graduates high school on Friday. Those are the bookends to a week marked with the challenge of holding 2 life-changing events carefully and joyfully. I married the Angel 22 years ago, and the term soul mate is casually tossed around but rarely appropriate. She is easily mine and I hope I’ve risen to even 3% of what she deserves. My son is 18 and steps into an adult life that I get to watch from a front row seat, the best one in the world. He is everything I dreamed he’d be and more.

This week will have baseball games and work and blog posts about music puzzles and phone calls and workouts, but the majority of the week in my heart will be a staggering gratitude. I began this by talking about nostalgia, and I sort of miss Swatch watches and Atari 2600’s and getting up to change between 3 TV channels, but preferable? Baby, I wouldn’t change one thing about this amazing, messy, wonderful life that I have been given, and I wouldn’t miss these people and this week for anything.

Under Pressure

May 23, 2023May 23, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The site prompt today is, “How do you feel about cold weather?” Probably just like everyone else. And I’m titling this post Under Pressure a little because it fits with what I’ll be talking about (which is NOT cold weather) and mostly because the Queen/Bowie song is just the best.

I write about youth sports a lot as a doorway. What happens between end lines is a perfect microcosm of the things we all experience everywhere else and a terrific conversation starter.

Last night the high school baseball team had their first playoff team, against a much better team. We won roughly as many as we lost, they didn’t, they won almost all of their games. In fact, they beat us 3 times by a combined 30-3 margin. They are a Catholic school and behaved, as I have found, as is sadly common to religious schools. They’re extraordinarily arrogant and without a shred of sportsmanship. (I know this is usually what teams say when they’ve lost by a combined 30-3, but that doesn’t make it false.)

Our local school, a massive underdog, won the playoff game, the Catholic school’s season is over and we play on. That’s great, but not the point. The boys on the other side acted like babies, pouted, and cried afterwards, reminding us that they are still boys, no matter how big they are or how hard they throw. That isn’t even the point. Kids are pretty much the same wherever you go, emotional, irrational, and generally obnoxious. If we like them, their immaturity is endearing. If we don’t, it’s an indictment.

The Catholic school coaches are very, very good, their team is always sound. And when they win, they’ve been composed and well-mannered. But last night, they sulked, cursed loudly at the umpires (who, curiously, chose to shrink rather than enforce conduct regulations), continuously broke dugout/bench rules for players and coaches, and thoroughly embarrassed themselves.

It says, in Proverbs 24:10, “If you fail under pressure, your strength is not very great.” They say times of trial reveal character, and I’ve always been secretly afraid of the implications of that. I don’t really want the trial, but I do want to see my character as it truly is. It’s so easy to show class when the roads are smooth and all of the lights are green. What about in traffic on Pennsylvania highways? What about when things start to tighten up?

These coaches failed miserably yesterday. I don’t know them at all, and maybe this was a snapshot of their worst moments. Maybe they’re great dads and husbands. Maybe they’re usually community leaders and wonderful examples for their players. Maybe this is the exception. But on a big stage, in front of a lot of people, they tripped and fell.

That’s the thing about character, a lifetime of behavior can be dismantled in one regrettable moment or playoff ballgame. Of course that’s not fair, but it is reality. The storms are coming, the question is how will we navigate them? I guess we prepare, we train, we read, pray, grow, develop, we lift weights, not for today, but for the times we’ll have to use those muscles. We’ll find out how we’ll navigate them, we’ll discover what’s underneath; the hope is that who we are then is who we have been all along.

One Step Forward

May 17, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The site prompt today was to list my top 5 favorite fruits, and mine is pretty much like everyone’s. The taste of mangoes would make them number 1 by a mile, but as they’re such a chore to eat, it allows blueberries and pineapples to sometimes usurp the top spot. Whatever, like what you like, as long as it’s not red delicious apples.

Now, in an answer to the question “What would you tell other parents about raising a child with autism?” Angie Harrington says, “Parents need to know it’s very normal to feel overwhelmed, to feel like you lack the ability to handle this. All you can do is your best and take one step forward.”

Angie Harrington is a woman who was on The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. I have sort of made a point of never having seen 1 minute of any Real Housewives edition. So, the last place I’d expect to find some real, useful wisdom is from one of the cast members. That’s what I know.

One of the things I’m learning is that truth and wisdom can be found any- and everywhere, if we only have eyes to see and ears to hear. Like fruit, we all feel pretty much the same about reality show participants. That’s a generalization, a stereotype, and ideas become generalizations because they are ‘generally’ accurate. But not always. And part of my becoming a wrinkly old man has been opening to the exceptions. That there are exceptions means that judgment is (or should be) nearly impossible. If there’s just 1, but we don’t know which 1, then we have to be open to every one. It’s a great way to live, and keeps me curious and interested, even about Real Housewives.

Angie Harrington said what she did about raising a child with autism, but it applies to parents of children without autism, non-parents, men, women, right and left handed people, of all colors, Dallas Cowboys and NY Giants fans. It applies to anyone who’s ever been overwhelmed by circumstances, which is everyone.

Maybe that’s not entirely correct, but I might (and probably would) suggest if we’ve never been overwhelmed, maybe our lives are too small. Maybe we’ve never risked anything. Maybe we’ve never run faster than we thought we could. Maybe we’re playing small.

Maybe we should be overwhelmed. Maybe we should question if we can handle this. Maybe we should be afraid, unsure, and take the step anyway.

It’s that one step that defines us, not the overwhelm, and not the uncertainty, or the avalanche of doubts. It’s not the fear, it’s the immeasurable courage of moving anyway. We all have an IF, and we all have the big choice of what to do with it. Will those ifs become the block walls that hold us or from which we leap? It may feel like just one tiny step forward but it’s actually the first letter on the blank page where we write our lives.

I hope I never stop being excited about what we’ll write today.

The Shar Pei

May 10, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Over the last few days, I’ve gained an impossible amount of weight. For you to truly gain 1 pound of weight in a day, you would have to eat 3,500 MORE calories than your targeted intake. So in my case, I would have had to consume 5,700 calories yesterday to be 1 pound heavier. For the last 4 consecutive days, I’ve been 1 pound heavier each day. This is physically impossible, and I’m certain that it’ll ebb to a more reasonable number soon, but still… I wonder why. Did I have too much sodium or carbonation, am I the victim of a voodoo situation, a curse, it could be anything.

For a man who has struggled with weight and what we’d probably call body dysmorphia, this phenomenon is jarring, no matter if it’s impossible or not. I’m pretty sure I’m the only human exception to science.

I’m growing at such an alarming rate. I told the Angel this morning it’s a matter of time until she no longer fits in our queen bed.

My beard has been annexed by gray hairs, instead of the cool (or at least what I tell myself is the cool) dark stubble I usually wear. There are so many wrinkles on my face, I appear to be more shar pei than man. I can’t sleep through the night without getting up to pee, and then when I do get up, everything creaks and cracks. I wear readers and don’t even try to read the ridiculous restaurant menus anymore, I simply guess and hope they offer what I want. 2 people in this house have iPhones with fonts sized so small, it’s as if they’re both taunting me. This is 47.

Oh, and I have a son who will graduate next month. Last night was his high school baseball senior night, and the Angel and I cried on the field as they took our pictures. He turned 18 last week. I have this peculiar adult that has taken the place of my baby boy.

What else I want to tell you about 47 is that every word of this post is true, and that I don’t mind any of it. Not even a little. (Maybe the number on the scale a tiny bit, but that’ll come down. I guess aging can bring a gentle, kind level of perspective, where there is more than only right now and maybe overreacting hasn’t served me well before and wouldn’t now. I don’t have to skip breakfast.) If the Angel doesn’t fit in our queen, we’ll get a king. I have the greatest woman who still wants to sleep like spoons with me, and not much can be better than that.

My gray beard is awesome, I’m thinking of really letting it grow out. The creaks and cracks are from years and years of competition and it was totally worth it. There are still books worth reading, I don’t care what’s on their phones, and I have always asked the servers what I should be ordering anyway (who else knows better than them?).

As for that peculiar adult. I am the dad of one of the finest people I’ve ever met. With each year, he shows more and more – we’re all lucky he’s in the world. And as heartbreaking as it is that he doesn’t sleep on my chest on my sofa in my home anymore, now he can change your lives by being in them instead of just ours. To reference a very famous quotation, “This is my son, whom I love. In him I am well pleased.” I get to look him in the eyes as a man, and that is nothing to be overlooked or undervalued.

Yes, I look like a shar pei, but each of those wrinkles have stories. Every one of the crow’s feet on my eyes were etched with a billion smiles, laughs, and tears. I said tons of Hello’s and Goodbye’s. I suppose I could eliminate the lines with several hundred injections, but why would I want to? This is my life, and it’s wonderful. I did my best to be fully present and aware, to not miss a moment. I am one who has been blessed beyond reason or anything I could ever deserve.

I am a very grateful shar pei.

Something I’ll Never Understand

May 4, 2023May 4, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/1 Comment

We all know several things about me, if you’ve ever read anything in this space. 1a. I live with the idea that we are all loved & accepted, and deserve to feel that way. 1b. Today is not simply an extension of yesterday, it isn’t just “what it is,” we aren’t just “who we are,” and our relationships aren’t just “the way they are.” And given 1a and 1b, We can do better starting right now. 2. The Angel is my special lady, and I’m very much in love with her and the still shocking idea that I get to be married to her. 3. I can’t seem to get enough of documentaries, the People’s Court, and Catfish. And 4. There Is A Light That Never Goes Out is my favorite song.

Because I hold all of those things closely to my heart, it pierces my heart to see people hurting and in pain, living lives as if we aren’t the treasures we so clearly are, making decisions that dismantle us, always settling for less.

The way this is manifesting in me right now is in regards to the way we relate to supposed catfishes. Sometimes, the Catfished discover they have not been lied to, that the person is exactly the name and face of who they thought it was. The “Catfish” just can’t meet, video chat, or commit, they have hidden separate profiles, collected money, acted as if they are single, and in some extreme cases, had fiancés or spouses. And the Catfished has a decision to make, a decision I absolutely cannot fathom.

I think of it in much the same way as I do affairs with married people. A person carries on with someone who is married, with what in mind? That they’ll leave their husband/wife and they can be together? But whyyyyyyy?

The personal ad/dating profile would read: Looking for an emotionally unavailable, selfish, manipulative, sickeningly passive, disrespectful, dishonest boy/girl who will treat me like a prostitute.

Why would anybody want someone like that? Why would we consider the opportunity to wait for someone with such little regard for their marriage, spouse, family, and us as a lucky one? Why would we so easily forget that Fernando is a boy who stood us up MORE THAN 20 TIMES, then did it on tv, after taking upwards of $4,000 from us, and hopefully give him another ‘second’ chance that we will live happily ever after?? If I would treat the Angel like nothing more than something I stepped in, what makes either of us dream that you would be different?

[I understand mistakes. I understand we all do things we don’t want to define us. And you know I understand transformation. But I also understand the difference between mistakes and patterns, between falling in a hole and living there. I’m talking about an affair, not an accident. 7 years of deceit, not the quick knee-jerk lie of a 6 year-old to avoid punishment.]

Would this even be a thing if we all really knew how much we are worth, how valuable we are? Would we allow ourselves to be fed table scraps? Would we feed table scraps to a queen? Would we lie so much if we believed we were enough and not as inadequate as we do? Would we buy those lies if we weren’t so insecure and afraid?

The thing is, in relationships like this, no one is operating under a framework of abundance, beauty and love. We have believed people are things to be used to prove ourselves. We all need a major perspective shift, and that begins here, now, with you and me. I don’t care who we were or what we’ve done yesterday or one hour ago, I care about what we do today and tomorrow. What could we build if we stopped seeing each other as lowest common denominator, if we stop settling for so much less? I bet it would be amazing.

Site Prompt

April 26, 2023April 26, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The site prompt for today is: “Write about a time when you didn’t take action but wish you had. What would you have done differently?” This is easy, I remember the exact moment and can draw a straight line from my sickening passivity to this table, today.

In college, some friends and I were at a dance club. Maybe that’s a strange thing to type or to read. It seems like a lifetime ago, which, I suppose, it was. So, we’re at this dance club in Harrisburg, PA, the night is winding down, and I’m standing outside the bathroom waiting for these friends, staring through the lobby windows (this club was attached to a chain hotel.) A drunk woman and her equally drunk boy were just outside on the sidewalk. He was standing over her, screaming. She was crying. Just a really awful scene. Sadly, this sort of scene wasn’t/isn’t as rare as it should be.

I knew there was only one thing for me to do, yet I stood glued to the ugly lobby carpet, dearly wishing I was not there. Then he hit her with the bottle and dumped the rest over her head as she slumped to the curb with her head in her hands. My head and heart exploded into a fiery mess, I’m feverish even now as I write. Yet I stood stock still.

Then my friends came out, I told them what I had seen, and we ran out as the boy ran away. We checked on her, offered to call an ambulance (which she declined – as a matter of fact, she would later find a ride at the end of the night WITH HIM!!!!) and talked like we were big time Protectors of the Realm. We threatened him to each other, and detailed all of the ways we’d have thrashed him, if only we were there. But I was, there was no hypothetical “if only” for me to hide behind.

I was weak and afraid. That night, she was much less important than small, selfish me. Of course she went home with him, how could she possibly know her value, as long as there were guys like watching her be treated like this? She obviously thought she deserved this trash, and apparently, so did I. What a terrible thing to write. These prompts are supposed to be light and superficial, aren’t they? I guess I am misunderstanding the assignment.

I wallowed in shame for years, horrified by my disgusting behavior, until I began the long process of re-programming me from a soft, pathetic pleaser into something else. I can’t say it even mattered what the something else was, at the time, just that who I was simply wouldn’t do anymore. It wasn’t good enough for her, for my sister, mom, friends, for my future wife and sons. I didn’t believe in God then, but it certainly wouldn’t be good enough for Him. And it wasn’t good enough for me.

I badly want to go back to show & tell that girl that she was beautiful and worth everything, that she deserved much much more than table scraps, that she was loved. I’d like to show him that, too. Because to let him think that he was worth nothing more that to be that guy, overwhelmed by his own insecurity and inadequacy, is equally unacceptable.

So now, that’s what I do. Every moment of my life is given to sharing that message. (And I lift a lot of weights, not so I could break him in half, but so that that kid would think I might. And that any other time he – or anyone else – thinks about mistreating a woman, he would think there might be someone like me who also might.) I no longer carry the crushing shame, it’s now passion and purpose.

It’s a cliché that we wouldn’t change anything because then, we wouldn’t be the people we are now. And that’s totally true. But I still wish I would’ve gone outside 2 minutes earlier.

Love With A Capital L

A journey towards living an inspired life of love in the modern world