2021 – A Very Good Year

I feel like I’ve been sprinting since 2021 began, and it’s only looking back that I realize I was running a marathon this whole time. You can’t sprint a marathon.

But we all kind of have been anyway, haven’t we? It’s not just me. Whether it’s been dashing towards the ever-moving pandemic finish line or trying to keep up with the pace of this new world and our own changing personal circumstances as the result of it (tell me your life is the same as it was when the year began and I’ll show you the liar in the room), it’s been hard to keep up. Here at the end of the year, I’m not feeling so fleet-footed anymore.

(I’m moving on from this running metaphor now. I’m out of synonyms, first of all, and second of all I’m tired. We’re all tired. Let’s slow it down and talk about walking instead.)

It’s been a good year, hasn’t it? Not entirely, and maybe not even mostly. Maybe this is your worst year ever. But there have been good things, because there are always are.

Always.

I have seen people reaching deeper this year. Within themselves, within their relationships, within their faith. Calamity and uncertainty are so important. They are the test or correction we pass through to remove the fogginess and make our path clear.

A clear path is so, so important. The promise of a path is that you’ll get where you’re going, so long as you stay on it. Speed is unimportant. No need to run. Stay on the path and you’ll get there, no matter what may come.
It’s so easy to stray from the path when we are unbothered. When we walk the path with ease, we may think the way unimportant, as though it is our very footsteps that define the landscape, and not the carefully cultivated direction in which we are headed.

The mistake easily made, then, is to wander. To blaze our own trail as though any path will do so long as we are the ones who walk it. To think ourselves the source of our fortune or grace, to not recognize the already-been-there trailblazers and helping hands of friends, family, co-workers, systems, history. God.

Ever change your walk? I don’t mean “in life” or “with God,” I mean literally change the way you walk? I’ve done it consciously about 5 or 6 times, each time to temporary, embarrassing effect.

I don’t remember the specifics, but there have been a handful of times in my life when I was feel really, really full of myself. Maybe a girl I liked smiled at me or I won tickets to a concert on the radio or…I dunno. The reasons are forgotten, but I can remember these few times when I was feeling pretty cool and decided my walk should reflect that.
So, I held my head a little higher and sauntered about with a bit more… Crud, “more” nothing. I sauntered, okay? I don’t normally saunter.

And, every time I have ever done this I have tripped. I have stubbed my toe on a crack in the sidewalk, I have rolled my ankle coming off a step, I have banged by head on a low-hanging tree branch. Every time. It’s pathological.

I stopped trying to change my walk years ago because the lesson was finally learned. Well, a twofold lesson:

1. I am not cool.

2. I am not the builder of the path.

I have seen people succeed wildly by thinking the path unimportant and straying from it. That can happen. Some people can walk all cool like and not trip and fall down, but they can doom themselves just the same if they mistake the path as an inconsequential thing or something they control and then walk where they please. Success can be such a test in that way. In many ways, it’s the ultimate test.

This is why this year–this cruddy year full of disappointments, unfairness, injustice, and that dude down the street whose dog keeps crapping on your lawn–THIS year, is good. It is good to get knocked down into the dirt. To get down eye level with the path, search for it, and get back on.

This year, I think, is our opportunity for examination. For looking down at our feet and assessing where we are in relation to the path. Are we on it? Or far from it?

That’s the ultimate good all this bad can do. That, I would submit, is precisely how God works in our lives. He knocks us down sometimes to allow us to build back up properly. He hits us smack in the face with a low-hanging tree branch to help us to stumble back onto the path.

My own personal examinations this year have been difficult. I have become acutely aware in recent months of how inconsiderate I can be. How bullheaded. How unaware of what seem to me to be innocuous, unimportant moments of distraction or dismissiveness that affect those I care about and rely on most. I’m old enough now that I’ve removed a lot of guile from my being, but within all my good intentions, I have not always necessarily been intentionAL. It’s a hard lesson, and a nuanced one at that. But crucial.

So, I’m glad for 2021. It’a been a good year. And look, I know that my 2021 has been probably better than most–it’s not even in the Top 10 of my worst years–but I know from a bad year, and I can also tell you this: your best year and your worst year can be the same year.

And if not the literal best, then something adjacent to that. All this bad can work for good. It can help you stay on or get back to the path.

Think about that. Think about the math of that. Even the bad can be good? If I were the devil, that would really piss me off.

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We Did Everything Right and My Daughter Got COVID-19 Anyway

We did everything right. We’ve been quarantining since March 2020. We maks up when we go out. Sanitizer is always on hand. No in-person association with friends or family indoors, and six feet apart when we do see them outdoors.

So, how did one of our daughters get COVID?

We’ve been strict. Our middle daughter has special needs and is immunocompromised. We’ve been making adjustments to our lifestyle to accommodate Cami since she was born 16 years ago, so in that way we were better prepared than most to roll up our sleeves and say, “Okay, well, life is gonna look a little different for a bit and we’re gonna isolate. We can do hard things, so we can do that.” Cami trained us for this.

So, we knuckled down. Given the choice between what the CDC says and what that dude on Facebook who swears he knows better says, we went with the CDC. It was tricky, as everyone knows. Initially, we were pretty alone. I remember the first time I walked into the grocery store with a mask on and felt so conspicuous and foolish even though I was pretty sure it was the right thing to do. “Two weeks,” we were told back then. But not enough people bought into even the reality of the virus (much less the protocols) for that to ever be true.

Two weeks turned into two months turned into 200 days. Until that point, we celebrated as a family with an ice cream party or a movie marathon or service in the community every ten days to both mark the time and create our positive within the big ol’ negative that was 2020. After day 200, we pared our celebrations down to once every 20 days. Like I said, we’re lucky enough to be pros at this stuff. Hard to hit us with enough lemons we can’t find more new and delicious recipes for lemonade. (That’s not a challenge, God.)

And all the while we kept pace with the protocols. We did everything we could for the sake of Cami and I’m happy to say there hasn’t been any real complaining. Even our youngest daughter—who hasn’t played with a friend in person in nearly a year now—is on board because she gets it. This is what we do. Virtual schooling? Check. Not eating in restaurants? Check. Buying lots of board games and even resorting to puzzles to entertain ourselves? Check.

So, how in the world did Elora, our oldest daughter, get COVID?

The short answer is: I have no idea. It makes no sense. She did everything correctly. We did everything correctly. It is one of the most unfair things to happen to us in a while now.

And yet, it isn’t at all. It does make sense. It is not unfair.

I’ll come back to that.

We knew something was up when Elora started complaining of “feeling sick.” None of us had had even an inkling of illness since February 2020. We took her temperature. Sure enough, she had a fever. How?

How!?

It didn’t really matter. We sent her to her room immediately and did not see her again for two weeks. For two full weeks, her only company was her turtle, all her meals were brought to her, and, I’ll be honest, there were days we kind of forgot she was there. It was harsh, it was cruel, and it was possibly unnecessary.

The day after sending her to her room, Elora went and got a local rapid test. Sure enough, COVID. So, we were all exposed. Her symptoms had only just manifested, but how many days had she had it now? Three? Four? A week? The damage, to all of us, had probably already been done. Crud, we knew of so many families where COVID-19 just rolled right on through the whole house. It was basically inevitable we would now all get it.

So, why isolate her?

Because we can do hard things. Because that’s what the CDC recommends. Because we don’t live in fear.

There’s a certain confidence that comes with knowing you’ve done everything you can. It’s not a confidence that everything will be alright, but just a peace in being able to say, “I’ve done what I can do, it’s up to God now.” Was there a moment of panic when Elora got her results back? Of course. But knowing we were acting responsibly on the knowledge and light given us meant a greater possibility of being blessed. Of having our diligence rewarded.

I don’t know about you, but the thing I’m afraid of most of all is regret.

The good news was: we truly had no reason to fear at all. None of the rest of us developed symptoms. Cami stayed safe. There was a day there when it seemed like every random tingle or small ache we might otherwise ignore was an indication of symptoms and that was weird and kind of maddening. When Erin’s allergies acted up and she couldn’t shake the thought it might be more, she went and got her own rapid test. Negative.

We all stayed healthy. Elora’s symptoms only lasted a couple days, and two weeks later she emerged. I’m telling this story for the first time now with her permission. While she was enduring her extreme isolation it was too lonely and too difficult emotionally to have her business out there. But she has things in perspective now. There’s no shame in getting COVID. She did everything she could to not get it, and even more once she did. Boy, are we grateful for her sacrifice.

So, are the protocols bunk? Everyone who knows us say that if they were to choose someone to hang out with during a pandemic it would be us. Because who else do they know who is more careful?

No one. And one of us got it anyway. So, the protocols are bunk. Stupid.

Right?

The reason COVID came to our house is the same reason why some children are born even though birth control was taken or a condom worn. You take what precautions you can, but eliminating all risk is impossible. The protocols are in place to give us the best chance at not getting this virus; they are not a guarantee.

But not being a guarantee is not the same as saying the CDC protocols are bunk. The same protocols that failed Elora also kept the rest of us—and, more importantly, Cami—from getting sick. How much worse off would we have been if we’d just said, “Eh, forget it. Elora, let’s party?”

I have no idea. And that’s the point: you don’t know what will happen, you only know what gives you the best chance. And that way…

That way lies no regret.

***Because this is the online world and I didn’t fill this little essay with a million caveats, let me just say here that this is not a political post. I mean, I hope that’s obvious, but I’m pretty sure you can post a cat video these days and be accused of being political. However, I do take certain things for granted that, for some reason, are political for some. Things like: COVID-19 is worse than the flu, COVID-19 kills a lot of people (see: “pandemic”), and wearing a mask is just the neighborly thing to do. So, just FYI, my goal here is not to engage in any of the debates of the day; I’m just sharing in the hopes it might be helpful to someone. That’s it. I learned in Kindergarten that sharing is cool. So, let’s be cool, okay?***

Will You Stay Home This Christmas? Please?

Will you stay home this Christmas? Please?

This isn’t a condemnation. This is a plea. Opinions on this virus are as varied as my friends list and I’m not trying to debate or engage with any of that. I know there are many who have probably already stopped reading and tuned me out and believe me, I’m not here to convince you. I don’t think I can and I won’t try. I love and respect you despite our differences on this issue. Feel free to move on.

I’m here for those who might be on the fence. For those who are feeling the pressure from family to join together or have been invited to a party and really want to go but maybe, in the back of their minds, there’s a voice that’s saying, “Well, maybe I shouldn’t.”

To you I say: please, stay home. You are not alone and I and many others support you. Cancel that party. Tell your parents, your grandparents, your aunts, your uncles, your children, and your friends that you love them and don’t want to upset them, but this virus is really bad right now and hospitals are overwhelmed. If we repeat the aftermath of all the traveling and togetherness of Thanksgiving it’s only going to get worse.

I genuinely don’t know what worse will look like or how we will accommodate that. For example, where I live–right now–there are no beds in the ICU left. And Christmas hasn’t even happened yet.

There are many who have been sacrificing all year to help stall the spread. It’s time to join them. It’s not just about how you or I personally will be affected by the virus. Odds are in your favor and mine that we will live through it, no doubt about that, but a virus is just that–it’s viral. The less we associate with others, the less it will spread. It’s not just about whether or not you personally will get through it, it’s about slowing that spread by minimizing contact. Please, even if you feel healthy, don’t go to a place where you are cooped up with people you don’t live with. In a very real way, people you don’t even know (and maybe some you do)–the future temporary residents of E.R.s and hospital hallways and rooms and ICUs–are depending on you for help.

I’m with you. My little family has been living a strict life of isolation for over 280 days, since March. The only other person who has been in this house since then was a handyman who came over to fix a broken sink. We all stayed on one side of the house while he made the necessary repair. Other things broke this year that we can live without. They remain broken. We will get them fixed later. When we do venture out, we mask up. We socially distance. We get takeout. We haven’t had a sickness in our house–not even a cold–since February. But even given that, for the week and a half leading up to Christmas, we have doubled down on our isolation and are not venturing out except for walks. Why? Because we’re giving our kids back their Grandparents for Christmas. They’ve been doing the same–zero contact with anyone on the outside world, not even with masks and social distancing–for 10 days as per CDC guidelines. To ensure we are all virus-free. And if you and your family are taking similar measures, then by all means, enjoy this time of year together.

But if not, please, stay home.

I’m not looking for a gold star here. I’m not telling all this because I want credit for “doing my part” or whatever. That would be dumb and I don’t care about that. I’m only speaking specifically of our efforts to encourage you and demonstrate that you would not be alone should you choose to isolate this Christmas. And it’s not just us, I have many friends who are making similar efforts, quietly and reverently with a sense of duty and purpose.

I’ll say it again: You would not be alone if you do this thing with us.

Please, let’s help keep the numbers down and give the hospital back some beds, together. Let’s stay home Christmas morning. Let’s skip the parties and family meals. Let’s do what we can not just for ourselves, but for others. It’s a sacrifice, and I get that, but you’re probably used to that, if you think about it. That’s what being a person of faith or a responsible citizen of the world is all about, right?

Huh. Sacrifice and Christmas. Can’t get much more in the spirit of things than that.

Merry Christmas, everybody. Let us pray–and do our part–for a Happy New Year.

• Photo by Elijah O’Donnell from Pexels

The Lack of Difference Between Patience and Faith

I’ve come to believe that patience is more than just a feature (or, as I once regarded it, a bug) of faith. It’s pretty much synonymous.

I can’t think of any past exercise of my faith that was not also a sweaty, when-will-this-be-over-and-how-has-it-only-been-60-seconds workout of my patience. Sometimes, the wait is brief. But not usually, and however long the question is the same: can we wait upon the Lord? Do we have what it takes to endure his better timing?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, especially this year. 2020 feels like I’m back in college. I know it’s going to end, and I know this pandemic/studying constantly thing is going to end, but it doesn’t feel like it most of the time and I’m not sure the reward at the end will be worth it.

But it was and it will be. My college degree reaped great rewards and my life settled into a groove afterwards that was never again so frenetic and busy and packed. We will all get our groove back, I’m certain of it. Even while it doesn’t always FEEL like it.

(The groove may be slightly worn and the needle might skip a bit, but that’s okay. It would be weird if we returned to an old record only to find it shiny and new. Maybe we’ll discover a new hidden track we didn’t know was there before.)

And I say all this while acknowledging that 2020 hasn’t been THAT bad for me and mine. Have we been quarantining for over 240 days thus far* in what sometimes feels like a futile and disrespected effort to do our part to minimize the effects of this virus and keep it away from ourselves and Cami? Yes. But, the upshot? Not one of us has been sick since February. Not even a sniffle.

Have we suffered disappointments, job and opportunity loss, and distance from family and friends? Yes. But, the upshot? Other opportunities have come our way (there’s the matter of a little movie I’m putting together, among other things) and we have found joy in being together in new ways. See: Erin’s amazing ability to celebrate every ten (now twenty) days.

Has there been death? Yes. And there is nothing not tragic about that. While I am grateful that we have not been personally so affected, I am saddened, just like all of you, that so many have been lost.

With the announcement of vaccines this week and a return to purple status, a little bit of light seems to be shining between the rocks of the 2020 cave-in, showing us hope and also how much of the collapse we still have to clear to make our way out. The time for patience/faith is not yet over. And that’s okay.

Every good thing I have ever received has been on a time delay. Never when I wanted it, always when I needed it. I believe all things can be for a higher purpose, even the very worst things. But only if we do not with our bitterness shut down that possibility.
I say none of this as a minimization of suffering, only as an argument in favor of faith; in favor of having the patience that we will get to that point of understanding if we so choose.

That’s my prayer: that 2020 is not a pothole to dodge on the way to the next thing, but ultimately a hard-yet-enlightening detour we can be glad we took to fully appreciate the better sights ahead.

*Minus, for me, the two weeks I spent in The Chosen set bubble of tight COVID restrictions and precautions.

Cover Reveal: The Other Side of Fear

Very excited to announce that my book, The Other Side of Fear: A True Story of Murder, Forgiveness, the Peace Only Faith Can Bring, now has a cover and is available for pre-order!

You can pre-order on Amazon, right here. (Cover may not be up yet, but that’s it!)

Or, you can pre-order directly from Cedar Fort, the publisher, right here. Use the code PRE15 at checkout to get 15% off your entire order.

There’s only one word to describe your dad getting shot a dozen times: cool. I was twelve. The cost of terrible violence was more than just unknown to me-it was negligible. I never doubted Dad would live. He could put footballs into orbit, just like Superman. Only good things came from the shooting: my sixth grade popularity profile went way up and, bonus, my family got on national television. That was the peak. The comedown was finding out Dad was human after all-fallible.

He saw the world simply. Matters of faith were matters of fact to him. It frustrated us both that I so desperately sought a deeper, seemingly elusive understanding of things. Then, when I was nineteen and serving as a missionary, Dad was killed. I’ve never been as distraught or learned so much about faith and forgiveness as I did during the week that followed.

That’s all for now, I’m just super excited about this and wanted to make sure you saw it. I think the cover is perfect and I could not be happier with it. Thank you, those of you who read the chapters on this very website and encouraged me to resubmit to a publisher. That was definitely the right call!

How I Went From #AllLivesMatter to #BlackLivesMatter

I left Rush Limbaugh behind a long time ago. In high school, I served two years as the cartoonist for the school paper and I was known for working signature catchphrases like “Ditto” or “Rush is Right” into every editorial cartoon. Sometimes it was subtle, but most of the time it wasn’t. I still can’t believe they let me get away with it.

By the time I graduated from high school, I left Rush behind. I saw something in his rhetoric that reminded me of what the scriptures call “priestcraft,” and I came to think of him as someone who was less about ideology and more about himself. It didn’t take long for me to start seeing political parties the same way. When it came time to register to vote, I marked myself down as an Independent. I never looked back.

My value system still leans a bit to the right, probably owing a lot to my upbringing, and also my religion. I’ve never been able to completely buy into Progressivism, even though one of the tenets of my faith is an emphasis on change and progression. Though I don’t believe in being stagnant or getting things back to the way they were in “the old days” when, for example, women weren’t allowed to vote and redlining condemned multiple generations to poverty, I’m also wary of the constant drumbeat for change, which can become a moral value unto itself at the disregard of what I believe to be moral constants. We should be moving forward, always, but in the right direction and for the right reasons.

One of the big problems I’ve always had with Progressivism is something I’ve termed “temporary exceptionalism.” It’s this idea that in order for social reform to happen then we must make special allowances for underprivileged groups or bring down the majority in order for the minority to get a leg up (I’m oversimplifying a bit, but quotas would be the most basic example of what I’m talking about). I don’t believe in creating opportunity by taking it away from others. I don’t think we’re playing a zero sum game here and I think, as difficult as it would be to achieve, it’s possible for everyone to have equal opportunities at the same time. I don’t think you get to equality by lifting some above others the same way you don’t get it by pushing anyone down. Otherwise, you’re at risk of swinging the pendulum too far and that becomes another kind of injustice.

Years ago, when I first heard the term “Black Lives Matter,” I rejected it immediately. My first thought was, no joke, “Hey, wait a minute, all lives matter.” I saw Black Lives Matter as more of what bothered me–of lifting up one group over another. I saw “BLM” as saying, as I believe Progressivism often does, “The only way we’re gonna make this right is by giving more advantage to these folks over here than to those folks over there who have had it for way too long.” Elevating black lives over white lives? No, that’s not right—same way the other way around isn’t right. I saw Black Lives Matter as a different kind of inequality and isn’t that what we’re all supposed to be fighting against? My wife and I had a lot of discussions about this, debating it back and forth. I was on one side, her on the other, supporting #BLM. Both of us operating in good faith and trying to convince the other of what was right.

I was, quite obviously, wrong. As a concept, Black Lives Matter isn’t about excluding anyone, it’s a raising of a hand to be recognized. It’s a righteously angry plea for acknowledgement that black lives are the same as everyone else’s–they matter. All lives matter THEREFORE black lives matter, too. This is basic, and I missed it because, try as I might to be an independent thinker, I got infected by a rhetoric that said a particular advantage was trying to be achieved when that wasn’t the case at all. It never was.

It has to be said that Black Lives Matter because too many people are behaving as if they don’t. Particularly, unfortunately, people who have power. Black Lives Matter is a spotlight on an injustice and a plea for change–a specific, righteous change.

The best explanation I’ve seen going around (and that seems to be convincing a lot of Conservatives) is this one I saw on Twitter:

It’s really as simple as that. My house isn’t on fire. I don’t have fear when I interact with white, bigoted, racist people, whether they have power or a gun or not, because they don’t see me as their enemy and they don’t see me as less than human. But if I were black? George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery and so many before them prove there is a real reason to fear. It’s the fear of death, and, after all the strides towards equality we’ve made in the past 60 years, we should not be okay with anyone walking around in our country with the fear of death for the way they look, a thing over which they have no control and is of no consequence to their value as a human being. What inequality could be greater?

Another way of getting at this same idea (and this is another example I’ve seen going around) is to look at what Jesus doing when he left the 99 sheep to go after the one. He was, essentially, saying, “Lost sheep lives matter.” The 99 were safe, so he went after the one that wasn’t. White lives are not imperiled in the same way black lives are, so #BlackLivesMatter.

I’m encouraged by the sea change that’s happening. People are waking up to what Colin Kaepernick and others like him have been trying to say for years, and it’s important for white voices to rise up with them, so I’m adding mine.

I believe in change and progression. They are at the heart of the Gospel of Christ. It gives me a lot of hope in our country’s potential to heal what are some very old wounds when I see the movement that’s sweeping this country. To see mayors and governors and religious leaders and what seems like the majority of people in my social media feeds throw their weight behind Black Lives Matter is an encouraging thing and a positive sign at a time when it seems like we’re more divided than ever.

To anyone who also struggled at one time or another with #AllLivesMatter vs. #BlackLivesMatter, I would encourage you to add your voice. You’re not alone. However you arrived at your change of mind, it’s an important story to share. So, share it. This is the time.