When and How

When did I lose you?

I know you were right here.

Beside me you lived,

Beside me you breathed.

How did I lose sight?

How did I not see?

The joy, the pain,

The blessed delight…

What bliss, what delight,

To find you again.

To live in your warmth,

To share your joys.

What thrill! what a sight!

To see you again

Like I saw you then,

Like I see you now.

Looking Back

The old photo floods the river of memory

I see what was and where I wanted to be

Those I’ve lost and those I let go

I long at times to be that boy again

Though age and miles took me away

How could I get back?

The memory of the place warms my heart

I see the faces and a tear may fall

For some I’ll never see again

But here I hold this photograph

Surrounded by those I love

And the place that I call home

The Quilt Frame

The setting is a small room in a house in Southeastern Mississippi. There’s an old couch on one end, aged brown carpet on the floor, an antique armchair and a chair from the kitchen table. However the predominant feature of the room is a quilt frame always containing a quilt at some stage of completion. That is the setting in which I remember my great grandmother.

I recall times that we would just sit in that room and listen to my grandma telling us stories of her life or instructing us in one thing or another. One particular day comes to mind when remembering that room.

We talked and watched as my youngest brother was playing around the quilt. He was a toddler at the time and kept crawling under the quilt and running around grandma. He would run to her, laugh, and with a mischievous grin, run away. His escape included a path underneath the quilt frame. To the astonishment of the entire family she crawled right under there after him. That’s how I will always remember her.

She has passed now and all I have is her memory. As I was thinking of her I couldn’t help but remember the image of a quilt frame. I thought about her quilting. Her life, and so many others have strongly influenced my own. The piercing of the loss is that constant stitching in of another piece. It leaves behind another patch that is now stitched into the fabric of my life, enhancing it, giving it character.

God holds the fabric of the quilt that is our life. We each have a pattern that makes up our lives, but often that pattern on its own just doesn’t give away the final design. I’m thankful for those sharp prods (the needle stitching in another piece of fabric) that he may have for my life and for what that may add to the tapestry of my life. Enough has happened within the frame that I know mine would be a patchwork quilt of great worth. The worth isn’t in the pattern of my life itself, but in the priceless pieces from all of the wonderful people like grandma that are stitched upon it.

Puppy’s Tail

There it is wagging

And now you chase it

Can you get it? Can you?

Panting now, lazily laying

She has but to look at you

Your tail begins again to wag

I can see the joy in your eyes

You play and look for her smile

Acting out, you make her laugh

And there that tail goes again

I recall times you’ve disappointed

And how you’ve made her mad

Your head bowed and your tail tucked

Told the story well

You want her to see

You want her to smile

You want her to laugh

And your tail wags

I talk and look for her smile

Acting out, I make her laugh

And there my heart goes again

I know I’ve disappointed

And at times I’ve made her mad

My head down and my heart sore

I know the pain too well

I want her to see

I want her to smile

I want her to laugh

And my heart sings

Trip To The River

I took a trip on the river this week with my brother, Ben and my father. The plan was to camp, kayak and fish. Ben and I spent weeks in preparation. We carefully planned our routes, checked the weather and ever-changing river levels then planned our routes again. My excitement grew with every day that passed. I had never been on a float trip with my father in all of my thirty-five years. As we drew near to the weekend we were to set out we saw some disappointing forecasts. Rain was coming. We checked the weather the day before the trip to find that it was indeed going to rain, but we decided we would tough it out.

We had to get a bit of a late start as we drove out to the river. We saw elk lazily grazing in green fields as we passed and the scenic Ozark mountain vistas made the drive a beautiful experience. My father and I talked as we drove. We talked about light, surface things for a while, but it all led to subjects that invoked great feeling both good and bad. Had he been a good father? Had he been there for us?

They weren’t questions that I could answer without dredging up painful memories. I just sat there and listened…and thought. He had tried to be a good dad. He just didn’t know how. He came from a line of men who didn’t know how to deal with the struggles of life. Not the struggles of hardship. They were men who didn’t shy away from tough tasks or strenuous labor. No, the struggles they didn’t know how to deal with were the smaller, but immensely harder struggles. Relationships. I mulled over those thoughts for the rest of the drive out.

Our first night of camping lightened the feeling. Camp was set up in no time and we set to the task of getting our fire going. I made our first camp meal. Despite the wait I think it went over well. A little extra preparation and you can certainly beat the standard camp fare of hot dogs or the limits of things that can be cooked on a stick. We sat around the fire and shared stories and jokes until midnight. This was what I wanted out of this trip, I thought.

The early hours of the morning brought the rain that the grey skies had been promising. I just decided to get up, put away my tent and gear and get started on our breakfast. Ben woke as I was getting things taken care of and helped to start our fire. We woke dad, ate our meal and prepared everything for setting out on the river.

We started just ahead of a man and his two young sons. The similarity in the two parties pulled strongly at my heart. In that trip I felt that Ben and I became just like those young boys looking to their father for adventure, wanting to prove that they were strong enough and brave enough to tough it out against the elements.

On the river we took it easy for the first several hours. We spent our time fishing and paddling only when we had to or felt like it. The man and his sons that had started behind us couldn’t help but to catch up with us. They came around a bend we had just gone over where there was a slight rapid over some shallows. The younger of the two boys was in his own kayak and as he passed over that section he excitedly looked back to his father and yelled “HEY, DAD! DID YOU SEE THAT?”

It was a simple question full of depth. He wanted to know that his father had seen him, that his father approved, that his father was aware of the danger he had just braved. There it was again. Affirmation. I needed it, Ben needed it and even my father needed it.

“Did we do a good job setting up the camp?”

“Did you see the fish I caught?

“Am I a good son?”

“Am I a good dad?”

In our lives as men we need to know that our father has seen and knows that we are brave and can handle the many dangers of the wilderness of life. We don’t really need to know that we are nice. We need to know that we are like the lion of C. S. Lewis’ stories. “No, he’s not tame…but he’s good.”

Put Away Childish Things

"When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me."

When I Was a Child:

I was most content as a child while watching cartoons on TV, playing Atari or playing with handheld games. I'm not sure if this was due to being uncomfortable around my peers or if it was simply that enjoyable. All I know is that I would become immersed in games to the point that I would usually dream or daydream about whatever game I was currently playing. My parents would put limits on the time my siblings and I would spend playing games, but we would often find our way around the imposed limits. By doing so I spent a large amount of my youth either playing games or thinking about the next game I could play.

As I grew to adulthood the enthusiasm for gaming didn't decrease in any way. The only periods of my life that weren't full of gaming were when I had no computer or game console. College, work, marriage and even my precious daughters did very little to distract me from the now overwhelming desire to play games. I began playing more immersive, time consuming games and surrounding myself with those who showed similar desire.

When I Became a Man:

For the last 27 years I have been primarily playing computer games. I could always justify the cost by doing extra work, but I felt that I was balancing time with my family well enough. I would occasionally realize how much time I was stealing from my family and curb my gaming for a time, but I would end up once more spending increasing amounts of time gaming.

Within that last few years a newer and very addicting type of game has rocketed into popularity. The games allow people from all around the globe connect and play together. Most of them involve huge amounts of time. I found myself increasing the amount of time I was playing to the point that I would very regularly go until the early hours of the morning. In the last two or three years I have not even tried to fight what was now, for me, a raging addiction.

Just over a week ago I began to fight it once more. Our Bible fellowship class has been studying the Revelation and though I've missed several of the classes I was thinking about the messaages to the churches. Each church was given either an encouragment or a rebuke to get them back on the path that God had for them. I found some of those passages fitting my situation quite well. I am praying that this will be a whole new chapter and that I may, as a man, "level up" to what God can make of me.