A Confession about Confession

I’ll confess, confessing is hard. But I was struck by the recent confession of a well known Christian leader. The scenario is all too familiar. The leader, a male, was involved in a number of inappropriate relationships with younger females. Just stating it like that makes it seem sterile and impersonal. The women involved were often young or naïve when the activity was occuring, or weren’t heard when they voiced complaints, or they just didn’t know what to do with it all, but then discovered or created a web-site to air their concerns. In this case, the nationally known leader was removed from his position and sent out a letter confessing his sin and asking forgiveness. The confession went something like this, “I admit that I was involved in holding hands, touching feet, and hair and blah blah blah. Etc etc etc.”

That another man fell into sin as a result of sexual impropriety doesn’t surprise me. It sobers me. It makes me afraid that I’ll do the same thing someday, maybe without even being sensitive to it. Certainly these guys are smart, well educated, and often spiritually sensitive men, at least at some point in their lives. But something happens. Frankly, its not the purpose of this post to suggest possibilities. What I want to simply note is the content of the confession.

Confession is more than simply stating the facts. It’s acknowledged remorse and regret not for the inconvenience of the act or the humiliation of the act but for the ugliness and downright evil of the act itself. Confession doesn’t say, “Well, I held hands and touched feet and hair but it wasn’t sexual.” Baloney! Who’s he trying to kid? Confession would say, “While my actions didn’t include intercourse, they included many activities that were sexual in nature and thus damaging to the women involved as well as to my ministry. Furthrmore, the fact that I didn’t see that reality, while involving myself in those activities, is as great a cause for alarm as the activities themselves. I’m getting help and have sought to reconcile with all involved. I am deeply ashamed of my insensitivity and behavior and will step aside indefinitely so that I am no longer a hinderance to the work of God.” That’s confession.

So, in short, confession isn’t “I made a mistake” or “I goofed” or “I did this or that but it wasn’t really that bad” or “I took the money but really didn’t steal it” or “I mistated the facts but it wasn’t intended to be a lie.” Confession owns up to what was done wrong within tactfully appropriate bounds. It’s that simple and that straight forward. May God help us all to become more sensitive to our actions. But when we do fail, may God help us to actually admit it, and confess it, rather than explain it away.

Boston Strong

I participated in the 118^th running of the Boston Marathon last Monday (April 21). Last year I dropped out due to injury and was sitting in a restaurant with Jan and family friends when news of the bombing interrupted our meal. We got up, paid what we owed, dropped our friends off at the airport so that they could head back to Seattle, and drove as fast as we could out of the city. There was nothing we could do. But having experienced 9/11 first hand I knew that if we didn’t leave quick, we probably wouldn’t be leaving at all, at least not for while. The pictures of the bombings horror are now enshrined in our national memory. It was a sad day in American history.

But this year was different. This was marathon number eighteen for me. I’ve run in Athens, Greece and done New York City five times and I’ve not experienced anything like this. For one, my qualifying time of 3:05 put me in the last third of the first of four waves and in coral seven. Usually that time will put you way up towards the front. This year, just to get into the first wave, you had to run a 3:12 marathon. That's pretty quick for most people.

Second, the race and logistics was the best I’ve ever seen. It ran like clock work. The transportation logistics alone were astronomical.

Third, this was the most secure race I’ve ever run in. Between miles 23-26 I saw clothed police officers roughly 25 yards apart, all facing the crowd who screamed at levels I’ve not heard ever. The Wellesley girls seemed muted this year in comparison.

I ran a 3:11—not the fastest time in the world and certainly not what I wanted. I only trained, again due to injury, roughly two months for this race. My legs were on the verge of cramping from mile 17 on but they didn’t. In the end, it was one of the smartest races I’ve run as I didn’t have the conditioning to run like I’d have liked so when I got close to cramping, I just slowed down and had fun. What an experience. I hope to it run again next year—God willing.

You Look Radiant

No one’s ever said that to me. “Dave, you look, well—just radiant! I mean really. Today you are radiant.” I think people have said it to my wife. Not me. Not that I can remember.

But the adventure of marriage—and probably any good friendship—is to end up with that. Again, I can’t help but view this through the lens of my Christian worldview. I realize that I’m tainted, but in St. Paul’s letter to the people who lived in Ephesus he describes what a marriage relationship can look like. After commanding people to “submit to one another” he describes what that would look like in a Christian marriage (Paul isn’t applying this to those who are not Christians). The husband is to love his wife sacrificially as Christ loved the church and the wife is to respectfully submit; that is, to put herself under her husbands mission to love her that way. When he doesn’t love her like that, she’s obligated to say something. That’s my take on it. That’s the way I read it. Maybe I’m wrong but I don’t think so.

So true submission, in my opinion, can look more like conflict, than the door mat style submission I’ve run across on some occasions in religious circles. When husbands just check out or don’t care or do things that create anxiety or fear or hurt in the life of a wife, or when wives show disdain, contempt, or scorn for their husbands, nobody’s looking radiant. And there’s a lot of that going on behind the closed doors of a home and the frequent, outward attempts at the facade of marital health and bliss are at best deceitful. Both men and women are very good at keeping stuff hidden. There’s a lot of ways to lie and most of us are good at all of them.

The ultimate goal of this respect giving, loving, submissive behavior is radiance. I think this means that ultimately, both partners seek to present the other radiant before God. I don’t see why a wife can’t do the same thing for a husband. That is exhilarating! So we have marriage, the adventure. Marriage, the epic (as one person has said)! Marriage, the quest, the journey, the voyage! The goal: to love the other well, so well that you present him and her radiant before God and others. Frankly, I want to do that for my friends and relatives as well.

The VooDoo Onion

I went down hard. My right foot rolled right, my body fell left. I nearly did a face plant on the pavement. It had rained all night, and a pile of silt had collected over a pot hole. It didn’t matter how fast I was running, I would have gone down even if I was walking! I was on mile 12 ½ of a 17.3 mile speed run in preparation for the Boston marathon. It was clear I wasn’t going to run anymore that day, and it was almost a five mile walk home. However, as providence would have it, I was ¼ mile from the home of my trusted friend Lou, the Greek. Though it was only 7:15 a.m. I hobbled to his home, woke he and his wife up (They’d been out dancing and had gotten home at 4:00 a.m.), and asked to use their phone. “Forget the phone,” he said, “I’ll drive you home.”

Lou immediately set out to fix the ankle. Actually, all I wanted was a phone or a ride but Lou insisted. “We’re doing VooDoo,” he sang while dancing in the kitchen as he cut up, of all things, an onion. He then put it in saran wrap and placed the raw onion on my ankle and the saran wrap around the onion and ankle. “Shouldn’t we put ice on it?” I protested. “Not yet,” responded Lou. “So is this some kind of Greek thing?” I asked (Lou is Greek and if you know any Greeks you’ll know why I asked the question). “No,” he said, “It’s a soccer thing and I’ve used it myself. Works every time.” Apparently there is something about the onion that limits the swelling and immediately begins the healing process. Lou had stolen the idea from some soccer players who had used this remedy regularly. After two hours I switched to ice then Advil, ice, Advil, ice, Advil for the rest of the day. 

It’s been several days now and the ankle hardly swelled up. I ran a hard 6 miles last night—a little more than 2 ½ days after injuring it—and then another 9.8 miles this morning. No pain. No problem. VooDoo or just good home cooking, I don’t know, but try it. You have to chop the onion up into little pieces, and apply it directly on the affected area soon after the injury is sustained for it to be effective. The saran wrap simply keeps the raw onion pieces on the injured body part. It works. Hope you don’t have to use it but if you do, try it. And you can even use the onion in a stew afterwards! Who knew?

Friendship, Romance, Marriage, and the Journey of Love

Romance. It’s what drives American movies. It captures the heart of our western minds. We want romance. We want to be desired by a significant other. We want to be pursued. We want to feel “in love.” Traditional societies don’t work like that. I recently spoke to a friend of mine, a missionary in Africa, about the traditional culture he serves. “They don’t have any concept of romance as Americans would understand it,” he said,  “‘Why would you want that?’ they wonder! Love to them is utilitarian. You marry to get work done and have children. You don’t marry for romance. It doesn’t make any sense to them.” It caught my attention.

In December my wife had a heart issue that sent her to the hospital in an ambulance with difficulty breathing. She’d nearly passed out on her job. Her speech was slurred. Her blood pressure was super high, and her heart was racing. I received the frantic call, with that description as I remember it, from my oldest daughter while sitting in an airport, of all places. (One of these days I’m going to make a post of airplane/airport stories) The point of the call was pretty clear. “Dad, this may be the end.” My first thought was, “Oh, no. What I feared, is happening to me. It’s happened to one of my friends. Now its happening to me. What will I do?” That’s a totally selfish response, I’ll admit it. I thought I was going to be single again, and it wasn’t pleasant. Very dark. Fortunately I got a grip on myself and started thinking rationally. Reactivity is never helpful. It wasn’t a false alarm because there really are issues and, at this posting, we still don’t know what they are. But Jan is very much alive and has been allowed to cross country ski, etc. so it can’t be all that big a deal—we hope. One of my life long friends wasn’t so fortunate!  

It’s been on my mind ever since and made me ponder marriage, lean into Jan, and appreciate the gift of life. So while I actually try to fuel the emotional side of our relationship (I really do, believe it or not), it’s not really romance in the sense that western people seek romance. It’s the romance of choice. It’s rooted in more than a feeling but definitely involves wonder and emotion. It’s the choice to love another person really really well over the long haul. After years of marriage, while the romantic and emotive side of things is still a reality, it’s tempered by reality, familiarity, and sometimes fatigue. Let’s face it, its exhilarating but exhausting to operate on a romantic kind of emotional level for a long long time especially when there are children involved. Loving well doesn’t have to be romantic—I want to love lots of people well and I don’t want it to be romantic with them all—which is probably a good thing. But I do want to nurture the emotive side of my marriage relationship.

I think Christianity actually lends itself to that. Here’s why: Christianity uses the joy of a wedding to describe the consummation of the relationship between Christ and the church—the bride groom and the bride—at the end of the age as we know it. It’s the start of something really really good that gets increasingly better over time. Weddings are romantic. Everything is so fresh, so alive, so full of joy and future hope and love and emotion and fun and the expectation of fulfilled desire, etc. Now that’s romance! So marriage, and frankly all of life, lived under the Christian gospel actually points to what romance is and what it can be; the celebration of a life that flourishes over the long haul as it should. Furthermore, marriage lived under this gospel, will be full of grace, forbearance, and forgiveness, all of which lends itself to romance. It’s life giving to have someone say with total sincerity, “Hey, you screwed up but that’s okay. I mess up to and I love you anyway.” That can be said in a cheesy, or even false, way which stifles romance, friendship and love, but when said with integrity, it does something to someone. It’s life giving, which leads to deep emotional attachment.

Furthermore, marriage as it’s supposed to be, points to what our relationship with God is supposed to be. I believe that this theology lived out, over the long haul, can feed romance in a marriage because marriage is a pointer to God. So while we are far from perfect, it tells us that there’s a lot more to come and motivates me to discover it, to pursue it, to seek the wonder of it all at all costs in the life of my spouse. So while the freshness of new love may be absent after ten or twenty or thirty years of marriage, the challenge to love deeply, and plumb the depths of another person’s soul can always be fresh to the brave soul who wants that kind of joy. It will take a little work, and creativity, but it can happen. And, that is motivated by the future reality of Christ’s kingdom—the ultimate marriage. It’s thought provoking.

Here’s some things to create romance in a marriage. This will also work on the development of deep friendships that need not have all the bells and whistles of a marriage:

1. Look for the fresh and the new. To plumb the depths of another person’s soul and personality will always be new. There’s just too much there. Look for it. 

2. Be others absorbed, not self absorbed. This means you treat “the other” as primary, not secondary, in your life.

3. Laugh a lot. Look for the humor in the relationship and celebrate it. 

4. Be generous with praise and gratitude. No one likes to be critisized all the time. There’s not a person on the planet who is perfect or doesn’t struggle with things. Overlook it. Be forbearing and forgiving. 

5. Celebrate the past but look forward to, and plan for, the future. You can’t live in the past but you can celebrate the joy and beauty of the past! My experience is that when people just live in the past, its like an anchor around their present and future relationships. 

6. Own your stuff. Be aware of your issues and work on them. Quit blaming your stuff on others. Really! Stop it. It will kill a marriage or a friendship.

7. Get creative and try to surprise people. I’ve been able to do this over the course of my marriage and frankly, even as a young man I did it in dating relationships and even just ordinary friendships. Planning surprise outings, vacations, and get togethers that are creative is a lot of fun and builds deeply into a friendship. For the life of me, I don’t know why people don’t do this more. 

8. Keep your promises. If you say, “Hey, I’ll call you.” Then call. If you promise to do work around the house, do it. Integrity goes a long way towards building a marriage and a friendship.

The Light Princess and Other Stories--A Review

I just finished reading George MacDonald’s book, The Light Princess and Other Stories. MacDonald was a 19^th century pastor who got himself in trouble because he didn’t believe in hell. He became an inspiration for other well known authors such as Tolkien and CS Lewis. The Light Princess is a classic children’s book but the story is anything but childish.

A King and a Queen have a child, a beautiful baby girl. But the King, busy in the work of running the kingdom, forgot to invite his sister to the child’s christening. Enraged, the sister—who is also a witch—shows up anyway and casts a spell on the child which causes her to lose her sense of gravity. She simply floats. MacDonald paints the picture of life without gravity in the most humorous of terms. But the story line becomes more focused when as a beautiful young teenager, the princess discovers the only place she feels truly at home, a place where she has gravity, is when she’s in the water swimming. The family castle is built on a beautiful lake which the princess swims in constantly. She loves the lake more than anything else—it brings her back to earth. It makes her heart sing. She is normal in the lake. Soon a young prince emerges on the scene and falls deeply in love with the princess. He is overwhelmed with love and spends a great deal of time in the lake swimming with his beloved ‘light princess.’ MacDonald paints the picture of the love between the two in interesting terms. The princess is not nearly as interested in the prince, as he is in her, but that is what sets up the rest of the story and in the end, drives the author’s point home.

The story takes a sinister twist when the evil aunt is enraged that her revenge on the King and his family is being undermined by the lake, so in another fit of anger she casts a spell on the lake and it dries up. The princess is beside herself. The one thing that brought her life has now been taken away. In grief, she locks herself in her room and becomes despondent. The king sent envoys into the remaining parts of the lake to discover why it was disappearing and discovered, to their dismay, a gold plate at the bottom of the now shriveled lake with this inscription on it, “Death alone from death can save. Love is death, and so is brave. Love can fill the deepest grave. Love loves on beneath the waves.” This enigmatic statement was explained on the reverse side of the plate, “If the lake should disappear, they must find the hole through which the water ran. But it would be useless to stop it. There was one effectual mode—the body of a living man could stanch the flow. This man must give himself of his own will; and the lake must take his life as it filled. Otherwise the offering would be to no avail.”

As one would expect in a book like this, the prince found out and wondered if he should be the one to give his life on behalf of the princess. He visited a hermit for counsel before making his decision. His choice is cast in these terms, “She will die if I do not do it, and life would be nothing to me without her.” He chose to be the voluntary sacrifice. He simply made one condition, to have the princess be with him as he filled the hole and drowned. The princess indeed was with him, she fed him, she kissed him, but did so without feeling. However, as the water grew closer and closer to the prince, she came to love him more and more. When it went over his head, she could bear it no more. Shrieking, she jumped into the water, pulled him out of the water. Rushing him to the house they set about the impossible task of reviving him. Struck by grief, the light princess began to cry. She wept with such intensity that she created a flood of tears, she was wet with tears. She discovered that her true joy wasn’t in the lake, or even in having gravity, but in the one who gave his life so that she might be grounded. So it was that as she cried, he regained his breath and she her gravity and they lived happily ever after.

The spiritual background of this story should not be ignored. MacDonald used the story to describe the atonement found in the pages of the Old and New Testaments. Christ willingly and selflessly sacrifices his life for those who are selfish and self absorbed. When one comes to grips with the cost and love of Christ, he becomes our beloved as we are his. We repent of our sin and receive his love. It's a great story and since its rooted in history, its more than a fairy tale. Think about it.

A Wedding Letter to My Daughter

I ran across this letter to my oldest daughter written just before she was married and thought it was worth posting. Here's a picture of the kids in 2006. Laurel is on the left. She now has two daughters. (Lyndi is in the middle, Katie on the right)

July 5, 2006

Dear Laurel,

I’ve thought about this letter for quite some time, knowing full well I’d eventually write it but not having a clue what to say.

Life is full of firsts and you have certainly had your share in our family.  You were first born, first in school, first to get a job, first to graduate, first to go to College and now, here again, you are first to be married.  

I was reading a book on the plane today called Velvet Elvis.  It’s written by Rob Bell, the guy who is the lead pastor of Mars Hill Church in Grand Rapids, the church Katie goes to when she’s at school.  In the book he notes that through out life there are extraordinary experiences that point to something greater than us.  Those experiences become sacred space, places we want to take our shoes off and say, “This is holy ground I’m standing on!”  It’s a sacred place.  

Over the course of my life I can think of some of those sacred places, those experiences that have caused me to pause and ponder and see life for what it is.  I remember times with friends where our conversation was so rich, so funny, so real, so full of life that I didn’t want it to end.  It was a sacred place.  I remember a couple times out surfing when the whole experience was so surreal it pointed me to God and to a plan bigger than me alone.  It was a sacred place.  I remember times with you kids camping at San Elijo, wrestling in the living room, going out to eat—it was a sacred place, holy ground.

The day you were born was one of those times.  Our trip to San Juan Capistrano was another, as was our trip to Europe.  I suppose the day you caught me prostrate in front of your door praying was another.  God has given us those things we share: the good, the bad, the funny, the ridiculous, the audacious.  In all of it, for the past twenty-two years, we’ve shared it together; father and daughter.  And now we share another time, one very different from the sacred moments we’ve shared in the past.  I will no longer be the main man in your life as of July 14.  It is holy ground, Laurel.  It is a sacred place.   

Scripture says a man will leave his father and mother and a woman will leave her home, and the two will become one flesh.  What we will all experience July 14 with you and Noah is sacred, holy ground.  It points to something much more than us.  I suppose that is part of the reason I wanted to participate more fully in the service.  I like those places where you have to take your shoes off, where God meets us in the experiences of life.  

I love you and have been privileged to be your father.  But you were really never mine or mom’s.  You were loaned to us from God.  And now you move on in your life to start your own family, to have your own sacred experiences with your husband.  All the time it points to something so much greater than us, to God, the ultimate Father.  

My challenge to you is to seek him fully.  Surrender to him and his ways and you will be blessed.  Life is tough but without surrendering to Christ it becomes even tougher.  Learn to respect your husband.  Honor him as the man in your family.  You will not regret it.  You are loved and I am proud to be your father.

Love Dad