Much to my delight, Tyler and Disney #9 hit just 1 hour ago, and I'm stinking proud to be the first view on this one. I'm hooked, and since you should be too, I've posted the video directly on my blog.

http://tyleranddisney.blogspot.com/

Much thanks to my brother for pointing this out.

If there were an award for brilliant bands who remain neglected, bastard-children of the music industry, I'd name it the Guster Award.

If you haven't heard them, please, go download 'Love For Me' from iTunes. Guster doesn't have a lot of what I'll call 5 star songs, but they have about fifty 4 star songs, and this is one of them.

Anyway, just a quick thought, but you won't be sorry. If you are, I'll gladly pay you back for the song....right before I shun you indefinitely....

Hello blog.

It's been awhile. I do apologize. I have written things in the last 5 months, but none to your attention, and for that I'm sorry. I haven't forgotten you.

The last 6 months have been a whirlwind, maybe the fastest 6 months of my life. I met a girl who was all things magical and wonderful, but it wasn't meant to be - not here or now at least. We gave 'we' a shot though, and I'm thankful and proud of that. We didn't play games with our 'status' or hide our feelings for each other. All that was mostly in the open, and our good communication meant the world when it came time to decide whether to step forward or step back from our wonderful, albeit brief interlude as 'we'.

She is still my dear friend and I am still hers. I won't lie and tell you being 'friends' brings me much satisfaction, and it hurts seeing her come off like it does, but that accents the difference in our desire and ability to press forward in our pursuit of each other. I don't want to sound upset in saying that, because I'm not. I'm just disappointed because in my impatience I want right now what God says isn't best for me, right now.

Relationships create what I call a healthy disorder. They have a knack for butchering some of the holy cows of personal comfort. My disorder didn't begin the moment we realized we weren't supposed to be 'we', but when we realized 'we' was a shot worth taking. 'We' changed the way I think. I was accountable to another person in way I hadn't been before. I had to take a close look at the jokes I told, movies I watched, and many things that I let come into and out of my mind. Being in some form of relationship with her required me to check my words, actions, and thoughts - not out of any insecurity, but out of a desire to present myself before her rooted in Christ.

So I think there is an element of disorder there - that relationships, good ones anyway, require wiggle room in areas you didn't think were pliable; space is needed to fit another person into the picture. That's not to say, however, that this disorder is without purpose. Falling in love and holding open the many parts of your life, healthy or not, to the thoughts and opinions of someone else - this is what I mean when I say 'we'. These were the waters I tested, and for reasons I'll understand some day later than today, God called my ship back into dock as I approached the high seas. I believe those are the seas that carry the most danger and the most work, but they are the seas that every sailor longs for - they are his song and his romance. Being that, any disorder, any change required to get there is an effort well spent, and that's how I feel about my pursuit of her.

God has assured me he has a 'we' in store for me, and will bless me with a relationship that honors and worships Him. He has told me this in enough ways, some direct, that I can hope with confidence, and He's given me a lot of hope, and He's given me a lot to hope for. In this one area, the desire to have a family, to pass on a legacy of faith to my children, that is a big big big big hope.

There's more to write on how to live and conduct life while hoping for a wife, a family, and the great 'we'. I won't write about that here. Just for now, I want to sit on this hope and savor it for awhile.

Galatians 4:6, Matthew 6:25-34

My dad is my hero. I’m happy to say that 25 years in, I still see him as a little bit bigger-than-life. When he’s close to me I feel stronger, and when he hugs me, I feel a warmth and caring that seems to heal all wounds and comfort all pains. Like all things, these feelings also come at a price, and with my father, I am completely exposed and completely vulnerable, and for reasons I can’t understand and don’t want to, that is both fully discomforting and fully comforting at the same time. The paradox of my fathers love is among the great mysteries of my life, and I love the mystery of it all, and I love him.

Like many single, post-collegiate wanderers in this new stage of life, I struggle with contentment in God’s direction for my life. By that, what I mean (and most others in my place, I believe) is I’m not married, have no prospects, and don’t know what to do with that reality. Birthdays have a way of really sticking an exclamation point on these feelings, and my 25^th was no different. He approached me that morning and knew I was heavy-minded. In tears, I shared my heart with him and shared my feelings of confusion, struggle, and discontent with this part of my life. Dad is very prayer-centric, and before long we were curled up together on the couch, him praying for me and holding me close, and me curled up in his arms. Does that create a funny picture? It does for me. The idea of a full-grown, 25-year old curled up like a little kid in his father’s arms – the image looks silly, but what happened that morning relates very close to the kind of relationship God desires with each of us, no matter how it looks to other people.

I believe God desires to draw each of us close to Him, put His arms around us and tell us how much He loves us. He calls us His children, and desires that we know Him as Abba, which carries a very intimate suggestion of father, or more appropriately, ‘Daddy’. Everything shared in Growing Young will point back to this one reality: that God loves us and cares for us, literally as His children. It’s in His embrace that I realize whatever I know of God’s scriptures or works throughout time fall a distant second to my recognition of His intimate love in my life.

To begin this series, I want to spend a few posts looking at characteristics of our lives as children. God refers to us as children in relation to Himself, and you might be surprised how often aspects of human childhood reflect the character of our Father.

Try to recall your earliest memory as a child. Try to focus yourself on this memory, shutting all else out for a moment. Maybe take some deep breaths and close your eyes. For some of you, this memory involves family settings like a grandmother’s house, or a Christmas morning. For others it might be location or sensation-based, like the beach or mountains, or perhaps the feel of morning light from your bedroom window, or perhaps your mother’s embrace. Can you remember the sounds, the feels, and even the smells? Close your eyes…let that memory soak in. Hang onto it for a moment.

A quiet moment with a memory like this often leaves us with a peace we may not have felt in some time, and has a way of dissolving our present concerns. In that moment we can feel quite free - our current trials and concerns wonderfully forgotten. These feelings are not without reason. Have you ever noticed that our earliest moments of life are lived without the burdens of past or future concerns? As children, we live as we exist - in the present, and because of this we are free. In The Sacred Journey, Frederick Buechner elaborates on this idea:

“For a child, time, the great circus parade of the past, present, and future, has scarcely started and means little, because for a child all time is by and large ‘now’ and apparently endless. What child, while summer is happening, bothers to think that summer will end? What child, when snow is on the ground, stops to remember that not long ago the ground was snowless? It is by its content rather than its duration that a child knows time, by its quality rather than its quantity.”

Matthew 6 tells us that God knows and responds faithfully to all needs, and our concern should therefore remain in the present. As Buechner illustrates, children have a wonderful ability of embracing this truth. Yet for the rest of us, how often do our ‘present’ concerns have nothing to do with the present at all? I know in my own life, the overwhelming majority of my anxiety, stress, and general faithlessness in God’s plan are directly tied to my dwelling upon past or future events that really have little to no bearing on where I am now and how God is calling me to live now.

The first assessment we each must make is how often our dwellings upon past or future concerns cause us to miss out on the joys Christ offers in the present. Jesus places before us innumerable joys, and He desires us to live with a perspective that allows us to see and experience these joys as He offers them – in the present, in community together.

Over this next while, I encourage you to join me in seeking God’s purpose, presence, and fellowship in the present. Jesus offers us His joy in the calm and frenzied moments alike. What joy does He want you to see today? What about right now?

So I guarantee this is the first writing series I'm going to continue posting and possibly finish. Why would that happen when none of my other 'series' have made it past the ever-difficult 1st post? Mostly cause I already have about 5 of these written.
'Growing Young' is a series I began a few years ago, and is inspired by thoughts borrowed from Rich Mullins, who borrowed them from G. K. Chesterton, who likely borrowed them from someone I wish I had known myself. I hope you enjoy a few of my thoughts on what I believe is a central theme of our faith, God's love, and the two working in step together.

Matthew 19:13-14, Mark 10:15

Some years ago I heard Ken Gire, an author and speaker, give a talk on the love and mystery of God. The intimate setting provided for whole families to attend, so there was a large group of children congregated near the front, with the adults in their chairs a little ways back. Part of Ken’s talk that night was about not being afraid or embarrassed to ask God the things about Him we don’t understand. He then opened up the room to any such questions about God that anyone wanted to share.

A small hand quickly appeared from the cluster of children near the front. Ken acknowledged a young girl who, after a moment’s pause and consideration, asked, ‘How can God be three people and one person at the same time?’ Some chuckles could be heard from the back of the room, from adults probably thinking it cute for a child to ask a question they themselves had long considered unanswerable, and thus had stopped asking.

But Ken never heard or simply ignored their snickers, which quickly ceased when everyone noticed the complete focus and tender care with which he received her question. His eyes and ears were on her alone, and the rest of us responded in complete, near-reverent silence. I don’t remember what answer he gave, but I do remember that he answered her with such love and holy simplicity that he not only met her on her level, but drew the rest of us to a place where we began to feel young enough to come before God with the same simple faith as that young girl. By affirming her innocent, unadulterated desire to know her Father better, he provided the rest of us a very candid example of what Jesus meant in Matthew 19 when of children He said, ‘the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.’

Children in their innocence can handle in ways most adults cannot the mystery of God. For children, it is enough that God is bigger than their understanding or control, and it is enough that He loves them. They carry in them a faith that stands simply-but-firmly upon the promise that “Jesus loves me, this I know.” As each of us grow older and out of our sin-fated innocence, our view of God becomes harder to accept without the filters of personal comfort, understanding, and any number of assurances that, like any idol, mistake our own likeness for that of God’s.

Fortunately, God has a different plan in mind. Through His Spirit, God is working to restore and grow that innocence we have lost, and growing us into someone who can see through His eyes instead of our own. He is growing us into someone who resembles His Son, and if it is true what Chesterton wrote, that ‘we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we,’ then we are in Him growing young.

This series entitled ‘Growing Young’ is dedicated on bringing light to God’s growing us younger in Him, so we might be young enough to see the world through His very young and innocent eyes, where the fantastic is still possible, dreams are still alive, and heaven isn’t an escape from this world, but a completion of the magic He set in motion, so very long ago.