Death and Resurrection (of a Dream)

This is a week about death and life.

It’s about the grave and resurrection.

It’s about re-animating what we had believed to be cold corpses.

This idea of resurrection has particular meaning for me this year.

A few years ago, I died.

I don’t mean that my heart stopped pumping blood through my arteries and veins or that the pathways in my brain shut down.

No, I died a different kind of death, a death out of the public eye. No one was there to mourn. No services. No flowers. The closest thing to an obituary was something I wrote down in my journal one night as I reflected on what my life had come to:

I don’t want to feel anymore. I don’t want to be disappointed anymore. I don’t want to want or to yearn anymore. I want to be dead inside.

People who haven known me for a while know how significant those words are. How so far removed they are from who I am and have been since I was little. My whole life, I had dreamed of a great love. My heart has always been geared to burst out of my chest and spill over into everything I did, everyone I knew. I dreamed about it, thought about it, wrote about it, talked about it, sought after it and fought for it. I wanted passion and adventure in every aspect of my life.

But we’re led down strange roads sometimes. Rather than walking a path that led up the mountain toward the blue sky and clouds and breathless heights, I found myself wading through the lowland swamps of what would become the deepest, darkest valley I would ever encounter.

I was suddenly years into a relationship that turned everything I believed about love and life upside down.

Lower your expectations is what I heard over and over and over again. And so I did.

I lowered my aim from having a great love to having a good love.

But that wasn’t happening, either. Those expectations were still too high.

So I lowered it again from a good love to an okay love.

Still too high.

Over and over, my expectations dropped down the rungs until they were rock-bottom: I will survive this love. Even if this person doesn’t want to work on it, even if this person doesn’t want me, even if this person rejects me over and over and over again…I can survive it.

I went from fiercely declaring that I wanted a great love, a revolutionary love, to not wanting anything anymore. To put to death all of my desires. How far I had fallen. How shattered my dreams had become.

The only way I felt I could survive was to lay that dreamer in the grave and pour earth and rock over him until his cold body was completely covered.

That part of me died, and I left that dream for a great love and a great life to rot with me. I patted down the earth, I dusted off my hands, and I walked away feeling cold, like iron or ice.

Days passed. Months. Years.

The sun has passed over it hundreds of times. The moon has peeked at it with its pale gaze. Rain has come down and seeped past it. Snow has fallen and rested on top of it. Long grass has grown over it.

This week, though, something began to stir in the earth.

It was such a minute movement at first—a twitch, a tremble of the dirt.

But soon, the earth opened up, the grass parted, and light and air and hope rushed into the space only darkness had occupied.

God is resurrecting dreams for me this week.

It's been such a long night. It’s been such a deep grave. But I believe in a Jesus who destroys death.

I believe in a Jesus who reaches his hand into the earth, rips me from the mouth of darkness, and breathes air into my lungs.

I believe in a Jesus who resurrects dreams.

I believe he died and rose again.

I believe it because I’ve seen him do it with me once again.

***

Feature photo ©2013 Richard Browne | Flickr

Let's...

Let's dream for just a minute. Let's clear the fog of routine and cynicism in our heads. Let's throw open the doors and dare to hope.

Let's slow down. Let's take deeper breaths. Let's allow the buildings and trees, minutes and days, smiles and broken hearts that have been blurred streaks of light in our peripheral vision come into focus.

Let's run. Let's pick up our feet and move with urgency because there are people who need our commitment, our dedication, our talent, our words, our care, our love, and not a moment too soon.

Let's explore. Let's get off a random exit and see where it takes us. Let's plunge into the woods at midnight and pray we make it out alive. Let's sit down in a strange restaurant and order strange food from the menu. Let's leap into the unknown and grow as we fall.

Let's stay right here. Let's turn over the couch cushions and see what treasure we've been missing. Let's listen for the hum of the air conditioner, the neighborhood kids dribbling a ball on the street outside, the grinding of the valves in our hearts as they open and close, the slow creaks of pain, the soft chimes of joy.

Let's look back. Let's pick the bones of our mistakes clean of the lessons attached to them. Let's finally hold the kind of funeral for our regrets that lets them burn up into smoke and soot for good. Let's remember the people who have come behind our sputtering car and have given us a push. Let's make our memories buoys that hold us up instead of millstones hung around our necks, dragging us to the floor of the sea.

Let's look forward. Let's dig through all of the dirt, wade through all the muck and mire, break down all of the doors, until we find something worth wanting. Something worthy of our hearts, our hopes, our lives. Let's set it as our North Star, fix our gaze ahead, and move toward it.

Let's sing. Let's belt out the songs we don't want anyone to know we love. Let's twist and shout and shake and rattle and roll and rap and clap. Let's croak all the low notes and screech all the high notes. Let's mouth the words when heartbreak clamps down our vocal cords. Let's whisper the lines that are so heavy with hope, we can't bear to sing them any louder.

Let's try and risk and fail. Let's figure out the difference between wise caution and crippling fear. Let's afford each other the grace for trial and error, to learn as we go, to accumulate some bruises and scratches along the way. Let's pick each other up after every failure, look each other in the eyes, and say, "Keep going."

Let's love. Let's speak the words that we keep corked up like a bottle of wine we may never use--the time to pour it out in the glasses of our loved ones is now. Let's be inspired and release the dam and flood each other with grand gestures. Let's be gritty and gutsy and force the crank at the well slowly up and down to give each other a few small, precious drops during the droughts.

Let's not waste another moment.

Let's not settle for less.

Let's do this all together.

Let's not be afraid to dream dreams like this.

***

Feature photo ©2011 Christos Loufopoulos | Flickr

An Open Letter to My Fear

We first met when I was young. You wore a crisp, black suit with a black tie. You knelt down, shook my hand, and introduced yourself as a friend.

You were selling me security, safety. My parents, of course, were on board with this. In the beginning, you started off with simple lessons:

Don't cross the street without holding someone's hand; you could be hit by a car.

Don't play with Dad's razor; you could get cut.

Wear a helmet when you ride your bike; you could damage your head.

After a little while, I started to trust you. You became more and more a part of my life--you moved in, you came with me to school, to church, to the park. You followed me, always just behind me, always ready to jump in and save me from myself.

Still, I made you crazy at times. I could be stubborn. Like the time I ignored your screaming at me not to play with fire. That was the day I almost burned the woods down. I spent 30 minutes stamping out little flames, and you scolded me the whole time. I still think it was one of the funniest days of my life.

It took something a little more close to home for me to listen to you, though.

You remember that night, right? The night my girlfriend told me she was upset because I had ignored her, that she spent the day with that one guy, that she ended the night with her lips on his?

I was lying on the floor, pieces of my heart scattered around me, when you laid your hand on my shoulder like the gnarled claws of a vulture and whispered in my ear, "You see? You see what happens when you open your heart? You see what happens when you make a mistake?"

I did see. You helped me up, and you wrapped your arms around me, and you said, "I know what's best." I nodded and rested my head on your shoulder. You smelled like a hospital room.

***

Every day, I affixed all of the pieces of armor you wanted me to wear under my clothes. To protect you, you would say. And I would drag myself, clumsy, clanking, toward the door to face the dangerous world outside.

For a while, I walked only where you allowed me to walk. I tried only what you allowed me to try. I shared only what you allowed me to share. I loved only how you allowed me to love.

I would see someone living out their dreams, but you would be there, just over my shoulder, to point out that I could never do that. Tsk, tsk. Too risky.

I would start to speak up about what I wanted or needed, but you would put your hand over my mouth and remind me that she might leave me. Shh. It's not important, then.

You worked so hard to get me like that. You miss those days, I'm sure.

***

We were in the middle of a fight, you and me. Who knows anymore what set it off, but I was standing there in all my cumbersome armor and telling you how claustrophobic it had all become and how I hated living like this and how I didn't think you actually cared about my well-being after all.

"Without me," you said through clenched teeth, "you wouldn't survive."

I looked at you and began to peel off the armor you made me wear. They fell to the ground until I was surrounded by cast-iron flakes of skin.

"Do your worst," I said.

You pulled a revolver, black as your eyes, out of your coat and pointed it straight at my heart. I followed the barrel with my eyes to your hand and up your arm and shoulder and to your sick, still face with all its quiet hate.

I thought you were bluffing.

I was wrong.

***

After you pulled the trigger, after you left me a bloody mess there on the floor, you thought you had finally broken me for good.

You thought you had made me your blind Samson, shackled and docile, with nothing left to do but grind grain and wait for death.

You were wrong.

***

I saw you, Fear, do your worst, and realized my heart was still squeezing blood to all corners of my body, my lungs were still feeding me air, and that your gospel of safety and security and self preservation was a slick sales pitch designed to steal my life, not protect it.

Now that I've seen you for what you are--not a friend, not family, not someone who wants what's best but a slimy, slithering parasite--I want you out. Gone. You're not welcome here anymore.

No more following me like my shadow. No more whispers in my ear. No more scary stories at night while I'm trying to fall asleep. I'm done with that now.

I'm sure I'll find you on the sidewalk outside my house begging to get a word in, or that I'll find some messages from you late at night trying to tell me about how dangerous it is to put my heart on the line or dream dreams or risk disappointment. I'm sure you'll do everything you can to work yourself back in.

Go ahead and try.

I stared down the barrel of your gun.

I watched you pull the trigger.

I felt your bullet tear through my flesh and lodge itself in my chest.

On what should have been my death bed, Love found me, reached inside and pulled the bullet out and reconnected my blood vessels and pieced my tissue back together and set my rib cage back in place and told my heart to beat and my lungs to expand and stood me on my feet and looked me in my eyes and said in a voice simultaneously as powerful as a waterfall and as soft as the dew:

"Fear no longer has power here."

Love has moved in now, and I only have room for one.

I hope you'll understand.

Farewell, fear.

***

Feature photo ©2008 AppleDave | Flickr | cc

Politics and Controversy: Can We Do Better?

I don't like to delve into politics too much. It's not that I don't follow them; I do. It's not that I don't think about them or discuss them with friends; I do.

But sometimes I get so tired of what politics and controversial topics in general have done to my friends and family. And I'm exhausted by what it's done to my Facebook and Twitter feeds. People arguing, people name-calling, people standing on soap boxes, people saying things like "It had to be said," people posting links to "the best article ever written on this issue."

And nobody's mind being changed.

And a wake of anger, frustration, and hurt feelings left behind.

I dream of something better than that. There has to be some other way to live and interact with each other. What follows are two areas which, if we can be honest with ourselves and change our thinking/tactics, will allow us to begin to do this "life" thing a little better.

Media

For as much as our society has progressed and developed, for as much knowledge and awareness we (should) have because of the internet, our current media climate isn't too far removed from the days of "yellow journalism" during the Spanish-American War. We're moved by flashy headlines, catchy tweets, faux journalists who can sit around a table and argue with each other, and labels and buzz words like "the one percent," "the war on terror," "obamacare," "lamestream media," "toxic politics," "big government," "conservative," and "liberal."

It's gotten to the point where someone can tell me their views, and I can usually tell which TV stations, websites, and personalities they listen to. (And if you say, "I watch/read stuff from a bunch of places," I'll respond, "But I know which ones you actually listen to.")

While we're quick to point out the biases of the news outlets and TV stations of the "enemy camp," we should all understand this: As much as we want to believe that the media sources (companies AND people) we follow have integrity and care about us and this country, they are all first and foremost businesses and money-makers.

They don't put bread on the table unless they have viewers, listeners, and followers. Just like advertisers work tirelessly to cater a company's image and message to appeal to their target audiences, so do media outlets, and so do media personalities. They may have some true convictions, yes. Then again, maybe they don't. Glenn Beck knows what you want to hear. Rush Limbaugh knows what you want to hear. Jon Stewart knows what you want to hear. They're all skilled, talented communicators with skilled, talented teams around them who know exactly how to pluck the right strings of their audience (us).

For example, when someone says that the White House is waging an all-out war on religion, that's not an accurate statement by any standard of truth. It's rhetoric being used very intentionally to manipulate people. We don't like when something we love has come under attack--and so we respond and rally around anyone willing to stand up for us (insert news station/website/personality). If our government was waging an "all-out war" on religion, we would know. It looks a lot like people dying or going to prison.

Don't underestimate the power of language--it can bring life to people, it can shine light into dark places, and it can let someone play us like a fiddle.

We're all recipients of that life and light at some point. We're all susceptible to being played, as well.

Additionally, even if we think a news report is well-researched and fairly presented, the fact is this: the media decides what is news and what is not, and therefore is biased. This is why, all of a sudden, tons of people suddenly care about children being abducted in Africa--as if it hasn't been going on for decades. This is why people suddenly think a new Benghazi investigation is the most important political issue right now. It's not that these issues aren't important, but they reveal the sway that media and politicians have over what we get worked up about.

Social Media

For me, the saddest part of the way we deal with politics and difficult issues is what we're doing to each other. I have a friend who, last week, said it better than I can:

It breaks my heart to hear the way people talk about controversial topics in our culture: no regard for the humanity of anyone involved.

We've prioritized our stances, views, even our convictions over the people in our lives. I'll thank social media for this one. We post links to articles that represent one side of a divisive, controversial, or difficult issue and preface them only by saying, "THIS." or "YES."

We post statuses or tweets that say things like, "I don't know how anybody could ever <fill in the blank>" or "Wake up, people--<condescendingly insert some "truth" that the rest of us are too stupid to know but you probably heard it from Fox News or MSNBC>."

We post things that blast Republicans. As if we don't have Republican friends and family reading.

We post things that blast Democrats. As if we don't have Democratic friends and family reading.

We post things that blast gay people. As if we don't have gay friends and family reading.

We post things that blast Christians. As if we don't have Christian friends and family reading.

We post things that blast atheists. As if we don't have atheist friends and family reading.

We post things that blast poor people. As if we don't have poor friends and family reading.

We post things that blast wealthy. As if we don't have wealthy friends and family reading.

As if there isn't blood and flesh and heart and spirit on the other side of the screen reading our words.

As if making a point or being right is more important than finding ways to pull our friends and family closer together.

As if our hastily typed 140 characters on Twitter or our thoughtless rants on Facebook are the most tactful ways we could express our thoughts.

I blame social media because (generally speaking) I don't see the same blunt, I-don't-care-how-this-comes-off approach people take online when I'm with them in person. When we see someone's face, when we look into their eyes, when we're able to physically witness the pain we would cause them with our words, we're suddenly much more careful with what we say.

And that's a good thing.

***

Forgive me for believing that we can do better. We can find better ways to believe what we believe, to follow our convictions, to express ourselves, and to disagree about all of it.

Can we start by acknowledging that we're all probably at least a little right, and a little wrong? That from time to time, we all get sucked into the current of what our politicians or media want us to get sucked into?

Can we start by committing to care more about each other than being right? By recognizing that our words have a powerful impact on each other and that requires we treat them with the gravity and responsibility they demand?

Can we let love move us, guide us, and dictate what we say and what we care about?

Maybe the current is already too strong to turn back. Maybe we don't change the world with this approach. But I know I would love to see my little world of a handful people show each other that we don't have to play along.

Would you join me?

Once in a Lifetime ~ guest post by nate blevins

I'm excited to continue the series of guest posts on dreams with one from my good friend, Nate Blevins. He's married to Ashley, who also wrote a guest post here last fall about moving to Los Angeles.

I asked Nate to share about what it was like to support his wife in her dream to move to Los Angeles and write. Another post is coming from my friend Jake next week from the same perspective. Both do a great job of addressing this question: What about the people supporting the dreams of their family?

While I've known them for a couple of years, Nate and Ashley in the last six months have introduced me to El Limon in Conshohocken and the movie Happythankyoumoreplease, supported me through rough waters, and re-ignited my passion for my dreams. I'm really grateful for these friends. They are amazing people, and I hope you enjoy this post from Nate.

***

There is a song that came out 33 years ago that still tends to strike a chord deep within me when I hear it. I’m sure you’ve heard it before and never really paid much mind to it. It’s by the band Talking Heads and it’s called Once In A Lifetime. In a nutshell, the song is about how life will continually creep up on you and catch you off guard. And that it’s OK.

16 months ago, I was living in Pennsylvania with my wife, Ashley. I had been with the same company for close to 7 years, and I was ready for a change. I had been given an opportunity with a company that I finally felt like I was being valued at. So excited for the new beginnings, I wrote a post about it.

I spent less than two months with the company, and I was spent. The job was fine, and the potential to grow with a hefty salary was definitely present. Despite the benefits, I ended up not connecting with my peers on a work and moral level. To me, it was devastating. I resigned on a Tuesday in November of 2012. With hope, and potential, I maneuvered to get my old job back. That fell apart, and I quickly realized I was unemployed for the first time.

“Take chances, make mistakes, and get messy.” Guys, Ms. Frizzle is always right.

When Ashley asked me about moving to LA to support her dreams of being a writer, the decision was always easy. She was always there to support me. When I left my job for a better opportunity, she supported me. When I left that job because I was unhappy, she supported me. While I searched 2 months for a job, she supported me. When we didn’t have money for gifts because I wasn’t working during Christmas, she wasn’t upset. She held us together during that time, and she was the rock.

Last January, I was able to find a new job, and get this, the salary was better than the bad job I had quit. The work was more up my alley, and I knew I had the option to transfer with this company. For months, LA had been a discussion. When you run out of money, have no job, and have no idea what is going on, a discussion like that can turn into a dream. While at work my first week, I got this stirring in me. I thought, This is crazy, but it’s right. I came home, walked through the door, and the first thing I said was, “Let’s move to LA by the end of this year.” We made a goal to get there by the first week of October. And WE did it.

Looking back at the influences in our life, I look to our mentors Buddy and Chelle. They were our pastors in high school, then through college, and during the first years of our marriage. They have been an unwavering example of how to support one another. Be it Buddy going back to college, or Chelle taking a principal position, or Buddy launching a new church. In the best of times and the worst of times, they will always support each other and be each others biggest fan.

Ashley and I have a story that’s uncommon today. We are only 26 and have been together for 40% of our short lives. We celebrated our 10 years being a couple, and 5 years of being man and wife this past summer. We are having the time of our lives, and living it to the fullest. I feel as if a lot of people think, “Nate is so great, moving all the way out there to help her pursue her dreams.” In reality, her dreams are my dreams. Her success is my success. Her happiness is my happiness. When you look at it that way, the once-in-a-lifetime decision was easy to make.

You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack

You may find yourself living in another part of the world

You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile

You may find yourself in a beautiful house with a beautiful wife

You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?

***

When not storming a castle or fighting a dragon for his wife Ashley, Nate can be found exploring Civil War battlefields or browsing tech blogs. He works in the construction industry, and wishes dearly Ron Swanson was his boss. He can also make a killer grilled cheese. You can follow him on Twitter and Instagram, @nateblevins.