"It is Finished"

The cry rang out –

                “It is finished”

As the crowd still laughed

                And scoffed His name

This man, This God

                This Jesus

Now bloody, beaten – unrecognizable

                As the man who

                Came to save

Just hours ago

He sat with them,

Declared – “this is my body

                This, my blood.”

But as they watched

                Among the masses

How could they have

                So misunderstood

He had told them

                This was coming

But never did they realize

Now witness to man’s brutality

He took His last breathe

                Before their eyes.

Night came –

                They took down this ‘savior’

Placed Him in the tomb

Believers all scattered

Not wanting to face the questions

                “You, you knew him too?”

The AGONY of those days

                Without LOVE

How desperate it must have been –

                Even to God ABOVE

But “It is finished”

                Didn’t end upon the tree

Never was He to be kept there

Holding ALL our sins

                On Calvary

Night came –

                Still no king

                And the world was dark

But morning –

                This next morning

Would be the awakening of

                10,000 hearts.

Morning –

                “He is gone, He isn’t there”

Then He appeared to several

                “Don’t you know me,

                I am here.”

“I’ve done everything

                I said I would do.

But most of all

                I came to show

How much I love you!”

“It is Finished”

He came – Died

                He is ALIVE!

And more than anything

He longs to walk

                By our side.

He finished the journey

                So death

                Has so power o’er our soul

He gave to us a life

                That makes us whole.

3/30/13

clc

              

John

Do you know John?

If you have ever met him, then you really can't say no.  He's a presence.  A joyful man that fills the world with so much heart and joy that you just can't help but smile!

I consider John one of those rare GEMS that you just don't get to meet very often.

I hiked with him today for just the second time.  I really can't believe that.  Feels like I've known him for years.  Our first hike together was last year and still I've felt he was a genuine friend.

We need more John's in the world.  Good, true men who aren't afraid to laugh, to joke and to really just be themselves around others.  I have many men friends who are always hesitant and well, stoic.  They are uncomfortable with themselves and can't always let go and enjoy ALL that life has in store for them.  

I was one of these guys.

I get around John and I'm so thankful that we 'click' as friends.  I want more of that in my life. 

Thank you John for letting me see an example of someone who lives each moment.  I have a feeling that more hikes together are in store (and I can't wait to see the looks on the faces of those who ride with us... they just won't know what to expect as we're heading to the trail - we seem to be a mess together).

I hope that I can be a little more like you My friend.  Thank you!

Linger

Thoughts seem to linger.

Memories of riding bikes and playing outside in the neighborhood.  Those glorious days of summer when everything was innocent.

Dark times when that innocence was shattered.  

That lingers on as well.

If I built a tapestry of all the days of my life, with each strand a moment.  With each section telling the story of me.  What would that look like?  Carol King wrote a song that describes something like this.  I'd like to think that my own personal tapestry would reflect more light than dark.

I see the days of summer.  Then I see the dark times even as a child when there was horror.

I find myself remembering more and more of the neighborhood I grew up in.  Short Street.  There were a ton  of boys running around playing, riding bikes and splashing down at the creek that ran down in the back of several of the houses.

The hard memories had so enveloped the good that I could barely remember the trampoline, the swing set I had in the front yard and the running free and riding in the wind throughout that neighborhood without a care.

What lingers now is a picture of a man looking back at a child who didn't understand what was going on.  And walking through those moments with tears and pain at the hurt that could have consumed me for a lifetime.  They almost did consume me.  It took a long time to process, hell, to even talk about those images.  But when you can separate yourself from the actual events, there is an ability to see it in a more or less clinical setting.  

There was a price paid.  And only in the last few years have I seen the lingering pain diminish.  And Hope take place of those damaging moments.

Now I can't help but think that there are more memories that have been clouded and covered by the dark moments of my life.  So when I think back, I am slowly being able to see the positive that may have been buried right along side of the hurts.

I don't want a life filled with regrets.  I can't help many of them from lingering.  But I also see that if I look deeper, there are some really triumphant moments that linger still.

Looking through the window into Dave Mitchell's drum studio and watching the 'coolest cat' ever play jazz... and I play Jazz still.  Pretty much the only performing I do anymore.

Sitting on the lawn at the world drum festival in Washington D.C. summer of my 10th grade year.  Getting lost in the rhythms and not wanting to leave.

My first true kiss on the campus of Clarke Central High School earlier that same school year.

8th grade Language Arts class, where the teacher actively encouraged me to write...poems, songs, words...just write!

My first guitar, which I bought with my own money my Junior year of high school.

The day I bought a little NIV bible from the local christian bookstore.  It was 1989 and though rugged and sometimes falling apart, I still carry it with me most every day.  It changed my life.  Made God more accessible to my questioning spirit.

The kids.

Hearing God's voice in the mountains.

Finding peace.  Slowly.  Day by day.

the hardest part is always "Goodbye"

I drive away.  

There is nothing easy about it.  Even on the best days with them it is bittersweet.

They seem so good.  They're healthy.  They're strong and growing more each moment I'm away from them.

I look at them and see the best part of me.  The part that is still young, mostly innocent - alive and unafraid of what lies ahead.  They are beautiful.  Fearfully and wonderfully made.

But I know that they have their own struggles even at 12 and 14.  They aren't without times that they question things in life.  As they've gotten older I am so proud of them for talking to me about the hard stuff.  It's been a more recent development and I am so thankful that they aren't scared to ask.  To seek answers.

So I drive away.

I cry.  No matter what, I hate leaving them.

It may be the hardest word in our vocabulary.  

I'll see them in a few weeks.  I'll get to hug them and just know that they're doin' ok.  Tell them I love them (over and over again).  Tell them how proud I am of who they are.  Not what they'll become, but who they are right now.  That they never have to doubt that.  That they resonate within me even when I'm gone.

I drive.


In our lives there are also people that we meet that come in and help us to understand more about ourselves and this life.  Special people that we might have never met if it weren't for circumstance and fate.  We have them in our lives for but a moment and they teach us.  They help mold us.  They show us something wonderful.

But these too we often have to say goodbye to.  To let go.

It really is the hardest part.

"Goodbye"


...and you journey on.

Castle Walls

Our hearts are incredible machines.  Our spiritual and emotional heart is no less incredible, and no less fragile.

I've been a wall builder, a construction worker of sorts, for years.  I've built walls, structures, strongholds, fortresses and yes, castles to protect my heart from hurts that have come over the years.  My castles started from the emotional turmoil of so long ago. It has morphed over the years from a simple wall to protect a frontal attack into the 'castle on a hill' protecting what was inside.

But just like the images of the real castles that sit as antiquated pictures of long ago.  So is my castle becoming less and less viable in my life.

I used to do everything to protect those walls.  To not let anything past a certain point.  Many people say that I'm too open, well they don't know all that is inside.  Only a select few really get to enter beyond the gates and see.  And that was one of the problems that castles have.  They keep people in.  Sometimes chained to protecting something that really wasn't working.  Yes, it kept out intruders.  But it also kept those inside from truly living.

There will always be guarded places.  My spirit recognizes that there needs to be places of rest that are truly fortified by something that can keep my heart warm and safe.  But the castle walls are coming down.

Guarding the walls takes energy that I no longer have.  I surrender.

But not surrender to the enemy.

There is strength inside that I have started to realize.  It is like those walls are becoming something so different.  The refuge that I seek isn't something that keeps out life.  

IT IS LIFE!


if you don't understand, please let me know - I'd love to share!

Digest This

I am NOT skinny.

I am NOT fat.

I sit somewhere between and I'm happy with that.

I am NOT a model

Nor do I feel like a gremlin or troll

I have more that's inside me - that makes me whole

I find strength in each moment

From a source much greater than here

And if you ask me, I'll just tell you, "you've got to find something real"

I love DEEPLY when I love

I FIGHT for what I feel is right

And sometimes what's right isn't what's before my eyes...

I wait for the moments

I pray to God - more each day

And I know that there's a journey ahead of me, that I'm willing to take.

3/9/13
clc

Trust

I trust too easily.  I open up too fast.

It often ends in hurt.

I don't go around telling my life story to everyone.  But when I do share it, it is because I feel there is a connection or a reason that those hard words from my past touch my lips and float across to the waiting ears of someone else.

I don't like being so raw and exposed, but yet I desire to be that transparent with others.  Especially if you've given me some reason to trust you.  

If you're real with me, then I want to be real with you.

Enough said.

Just know that I can come across as intense or too serious.  Yet there are some who don't think I have a serious bone in my body.

I just want to trust.  It's innate to my nature.  It's bonded inside my soul to seek others that have shared similar paths.  But please be careful.  There is such a sensitive area wide open and waiting to be trampled on when I'm than trusting.

I know that some of you probably understand this all too well.

I want to trust.  But the questions come back to haunt me...

Will I be hurt again?

Will I find that I'm looked down on when I open up?

Will I ever be able to just know that it's ok?


Trust me...

I'll do my best to trust you too.

BRANDED

Why do we mark ourselves?  Tattoos, Piercings, Clothing.  We put marks upon our bodies or wear specific logos to identify us with a group.  The significance is really within the eye of the wearer and maybe others who share the same marks or beliefs.  But why do we need these?  What makes them so powerful at times?

I have two tattoos.  I had the first one placed on my body during a deep struggle in 2001.  It's meaning will forever be part of my journey, but I don't sit and reflect upon the actual mark daily.  The second I found part of my letting go and moving through 2011 - one of the roughest years of my life.

They both resonate a truth I can never truly deny.  And though there are many days, weeks, months that I have tried to walk away from them, they still remain.  I mean come on, when you put something on your body like that, it ISN'T just going away!

Balance.  

Direction.

For here on the blog, that's what I'll call them.  It's what each symbolizes.

In 2001 I needed to know that I wasn't alone.  And I needed to find the things that allowed me to live within the yearnings of my heart and the larger picture of life that I wanted to accept.

There is within a desire to find balance in my physical, my emotional/mental, and my spiritual self.  When those three align I can sense a cleansing of the fog that my spirit sometimes lingers in.  That God is real and that I know him.  That there is a mental and emotional charge that flows through me and others that I cherish and care for.  That my physical body needs to MOVE and to strengthen the muscles and fibers that help me to continue in the world each day.

Then there is direction.

This one is actually the specifics that allow me to find balance.

"Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, minding your own business, working with your hands - so that you may earn the respect of others and not be dependent upon anyone."

1 Thessalonians 4:11, 12

When I go on all of these crazy trips to the woods, I'm seeking the quiet that often eludes me here.  I am working on more quiet in the everyday.  But when I go away, like Christ often did, I find that the quiet often shatters the NOISE that fills my head.  Then I realize that I need to recognize that the moments are to be cherished as well.  

Eradicate Gossip.  I hate it.  I know that I am guilty of it, but it just isn't my business unless I am directly affected by it.  And even then I need to be quiet first.  Listen.  And know that I don't have to speak.  I don't have to join in on the 'news' that so many of us just crave.

And though my job isn't some farmer or laborers, I need to remember that the work I do is something that others will look at and see the character in me.  That my place in this world may not be lofty or esteemed by all, but it is the honest gathering of my talents and work ethic and that all three of the above will show to others.

The second tattoo is the marking of that verse 1T411 (see picture above).

I don't encourage tattoos, logos or even crosses, unless you are willing to live through those statements on a daily basis. 

I try to.  Don't always succeed.

But I continue to daily try.

I lift my eyes to the hills...

So there is this spiritual journey that continues to move through me.

I have seen it over my life, and it still moves through, with and around me today.  The more I listen though, doesn't automatically bring peace.

I may lift my eyes up.  But when on the journey, that means that often I am climbing towards the peak in front of me.  It's easy to just look up, but when "up" is the destination, the journey is more than just a place we're destined for.  It is a movement that we have to take on for ourselves that moves us up - closer to His presence.

"where does my help come from?"

God.  

Simple.  Concise.  Undeniable.

BUT, that doesn't mean easy.  Especially when you're dealing with a stubborn ape like me!

I fought Him today.  I cursed.  I screamed.  I found myself arguing with what I knew was the truth.  I have never been one to just accept.  I challenge inside everything that He stands for.  I hate the unknown, and well, God represents some pretty strong truths, but there is trusting the unseen..

So as I went up the mountain, I talked.  I found myself away from the group.  Alone with Him I don't just accept.  I get angry, sad, lost, found, weeping and singing.  A mix of the thoughts and prayers that I have and  a deep yearning for MORE.

I made it to the top.  I don't give up easily.  I long for MORE of this.  Yes, MORE of the struggling through my beliefs until I know that they are truly what I BELIEVE.  MORE looking for solid truths that resonate both on the trail and in life back in the world.

"My help comes from the Lord."