GENDADS

Very difficult days for the writer in me.  Daily posted in Christmas week.  Loved it.  Good response.  Then several days of travel from the kids to SoCal.  Distractions in reorganizing life back home; a holiday of sorts from writing.

Getting back to the writing cycle is hard.  Cycle?  Writing comes from the heart, filtered through the head and all that goes on in there.  If it’s a passion, good writing makes it way throught the guantlet.  Despite distractions, detours, roadblocks, and speedbumps the heart makes its way through the keyboad.

And did I forget to say the pc that supports that keyboard can be a detour?  Not like ink drying on the quill or the lead breaking, a dying laptop is an “overthe cliff” detour !  Three full days only partially recovering a crashed computer.  Took an hour just to get back up on GenDads this morning and the loss of my email address book means I’m drifting. 

PC-less just days before I finally launch my “Writing Getaway,” four days a week away writing “Generational Fatheirng” ’til it’s done.  Forced into wrestling with life and writing issues, I’m forced to inventory and re-assess.  Entering a new cancer protocol, missing my extraordinary grandchildren, and sharing extreme health conditions of my wife; this stuff makes you think.  Such is the winding road from heart through head through keyboad.

Why is this worth posting?  Some of you are readers, some are writers.  Whichever, I pose you the question.  Is there something down there worth pushing and pulling through those detours?   If you’re a writer do you just write head stuff ?  If a reader, do you have anything down there worth delivering if you did have the writing habit?  Why not write something to someone, even yourself, when you come up with an answer.

TAYLOR, MY LUNCH AND POOL PARTNER
Maybe I can pin it on the mysterious electronic quirks of the Internet and Word Press. But an hour into my vingnette about God showing up at the pool table with Taylor and it disappears. Three hours later, kids yanking on Popi to join them with our traditional Muppets Christmas Carol, I finished for the second time.

But, I didn’t like it this morning when I re-read it.

Why? Because, on reflection, the concept at the pool table with Taylor is important. I labled it off the cuff as the “Transition Moment” that identifies when person, young or old, makes the Purpose Driven Life decision: “It’s not about me, it’s about God. I am not God.” It’s that decision moment when I decide to make my way in life alongside Jesus or decide (usually a non-decision) to follow the Christian crowd of my family or national culture.

So, this is a corrective, short post. It ends with a Scripture and a question. There are a lot of these if you have eyes and heart to see; here’s Colosians 3:1,2 Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things

Now the QUESTION: You made the TRANSITION yet? Is your life about Him or about you and yours?

Speaking of things above and below: You will really like the post in Legacy Dad. Like me, you may want to print it off and read it for family devotions: PLENTITUDE !  It’s a Christmas season thing.

This post had to wait a bit. Dates, billiards, and God were happening.

I was expecting God to show up somewhere during my lunch and pool table date with Taylor. He always does. Not “drop in” like a rescue. No, we had Jesus join us on that backpack challenge, so it’s more like He joins us on walks, rides, and lunch dates.

A NEW DIRECTION, THIS TRANSITION.  SOMETIMES IT’S MASKED.

There is real joy in being popular in the family. As a grandfather with legacy on my mind, one of the great joys of life is the delight of hearing God speak to my grandchildren. Greater still is His voice through them.

TWO KID DATES, TWO VOICES FROM THE LORD. . .READ MORE

SO BIG, SO STRONG…BUT HOW LONG CAN YOU KEEP BALANCE, MARGIN, GRACE?

On one of those personal notes people like, I’m sitting in our DVS (Distinquished Visitors Suite) at Nellis AFB, Las Vegas. Carolyn and are are in route to the kids and the grandwonders we loaned them. Am up way early and simply enjoying catching up on emails and suantering over to friends blogs.

There is a point to this as Carolyn stirs in our swanky suite. I was hoping Jesus was busy already and wouldn’t get back to me about the question on the trail with Matt and Taylor on the Rite of Passage hike. “Over these 60 years of my Walk with you, have I pleased you, Jesus?” When He offered three illustrations of His pleasure and three of His “not so much,” I thought, to myself (do you see how funny that is…I was chatting with Jesus), “I can survive this…I wonder where He’ll go.”

So far so good. But then He started out, “So, Gary, if I said ‘flotsam and jetsam’ in the same sent sentence with ‘energy’ and ‘wake,’ can you guess where I’m taking this.”

YIKES, He’s not going there, is He?

He was. If I could only rewind for a redo first. All He had to say was “Casablanca, Morocco…” and I knew He was homing in on “IT”.

AND WHAT COULD “IT” POSSIBLY BE? MORE

I love it when Jesus laughs.  Those serious authors of the Gospels left out a lot, I think.  Because as we trudged the trail upward (hey, it’s not fair; He had sandles and wasn’t even huffing), He reared His head back with this great, almost raucus laugh when He described one of His favorite memories of me.  Suddenly it became mine.

 Strange, though.  It was deeply painful at the time.

Rather than the tomes it’d take to describe the fire that destroyed our garage and much more, I’ll just sum it up but tell you about Jesus’s take on my and my bride’s reaction.

JESUS, WHAT COULD BE SO FUNNY ? MORE

LOOKIE ME!  I RUN, I DANCE, I STRUT…(for Jesus?)

This one caught me off guard even though I anticipated it. My jaw tightened a little and I noticed I was not looking at Him, but at the trail, not ahead, but at my boots. “Gary, the list of examples I could use for this particular area of your life that didn’t please me is long. I know you know what I’m about to say. It makes both of us sad. But at the time, I was the only sad One.

“You thought–no, you assumed–you were doing My will. But you didn’t stop often enough to check it out with me. Let’s see, how many names can we use to describe this one? There’s ‘busyness,’ of course, and… HOW HE LABELED MY MISGUIDED SERVICE

“First,” said Jesus as we continued up the trail,”I have loved your faithfulness and your resiliance. They go together. Do you remember how the board of the church got together and told you how you irritated them and how you were having a negative effect on the people in the church you were trying to help? I do. It was a set up. By me.”

“What I like, because results show still today, is that you spent the next couple of days reading your scriptures and writing in your journal. Do you remember your entry: ‘The marvelous walls framing the edifice of my own hand was so luminous, so high, so, well…humbly grand. Then Jesus sent some thugs to trash it. How could they? How could HE?! All I have left is shards and dust. Wait, wait…Isn’t this like the potter’s hand on soft clay on the wheel when He gives up on one form and smashes it down to create another? I will let God build me up this time, one brick at a time, kiln fired and layed by His hand true to the Cornerstone.’”

“I liked that, Gary. That was a hard time, and I meant it to be. It was necessary. But you responded as I’d wanted. That painful event was a prize to me, as were the 194 other times since then which you—mostly—responded with the grace I’d intended. It was my grace. By the way, Gary, there’s more ahead. You’ll do fine.”

“Resilience and faithfulness. You bounce back and stay on course. I’d like you to pass that on to your children and grandchildren. That’s what Taylor is learning on this hike. You guys missed the spring, didn’t give up, made it through the night, found water the next day, and had a birthday in the process.”

“Now then, I do want to tell you about something you thought was really going well. You were so pleased and believed it was a major ministry accomplishsment. But I wasn’t so happy when…”(tomorrow).

I know, the delay from Deer kills, manhood triumphs, and techie gremlins distracted me.  You keep asking, “So what did Jesus say?”  in response to the question I asked Him on Taylor’s “manhood”  backpacking hike (yes, way back in late summer, that one).   I’m repeating my first question for my sagging memory and yours, and because all of us should be asking this daily–AND should be listening close for the answer.

There I was huffing and tired on the steep tail.  When I joined Jesus around the bend, the question came slowly.  I was beside my self with a mix of joy, respect, overwhelming adoration.  I framed my questin by a lifetiime of curiosity, realizing I should have asked this daily and not saved it ’til this meeting on the trail.  

“Jesus, about these many years behind me, have all my effodrts, all the sacrifices I’ve put my family through, all those times of extreme tension in ministry been as You’ve wanted them? Have I pleased You? Has the fruit been as rich for You as I thought? What would You have me pass on to those who follow behind me?”

He smiled, of course.  “You mean, have you truly followed Me, done My will?”
SO WHAT DID JESUS SAY?

So, we’re back to the manhood year of passage hike.

It was for Taylor. He’s now pushing 13 and the five day pack-in was transformational…for all three of us. In fact, the three of us are heading out to the snowy hills of southern Utah for Taylor’s first Deer hunt. Well, I’m in absencia but sending the scope I bought for T’s rifle. Matt and Taylor and my scope are headed out about midnight tonight.

If you’ve followed our summer journey, you know Matt came up with one question we all needed to think over as we hiked. “Imagine Jesus just up the trail ready to join us. We can ask two questions. What would they be?” Keep in mind that a recent USA Today poll asking people what they would ask of God or a supreme being found that 34% said, “What is my purpose in life?”

So now it is “Popi’s” turn. Interestingly, that this was the day I later celebrated my 70th birthday at 10,000 feet. I had thought about it for almost an hour, wheezing up the trail. When Matt said, “OK, Popi, your turn. We’ve been waiting. What would you ask Jesus?”

  What did Popi ask?