Letters From "Bamma"

"Train up a child in the way that he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. " - Proverbs 22:6


My mother-in-law, Carol, used to write little notes to Anthony when he was an infant. She wrote one in the "Baby's First Bible" she bought him when he was still in diapers, and a few more, here or there, over the years in other books or on scraps of paper she would put in his lunch box before she would walk him to school the next day. That she did this was very sweet. That she did this while she was slowly dying of breast cancer is profound.

Earlier this week I blogged about the sudden and unexpected death of a sports journalist I never knew and the futility this seemed to convey in how we all live our lives not knowing our ends.  I went home that night to find a letter, typed and framed, from Carol to Anthony. It was the scripture she had prayed over him every day of his infancy as he clung to life, eleven weeks premature into this world, at just over three pounds. The scripture? Psalm 139:13-16. At the bottom of the letter she wrote a few words in her own hand, as if to stamp it personally and formally, as if to say "I read this. I attest to it. It is factual."

I sat down in our living room holding her letter and I was humbled. Some of us do know our own ends and some of us make the most out of them. For some people that's skydiving and bull riding I guess (or so that song goes). For Carol it was about doing all she could to pass the Word of God on to her grandson, to train him in it, rear him in it, bathe him in it.  In so doing she made her death a thing about life. The life of another human being. A life she would never see grow past the age of six. I thought to myself, "What brave foresight."

Then I found out today that there are notes left behind for Sophia too, as she grows and reaches certain ages. Notes for a little baby that was only months old when Carol died.

Time The Avenger

I got a "tweet" a while back from a sport's journalist I follow who was paying respects to an esteemed colleague of his who had suddenly died.

I did not recognize the deceased writer's name or where he was from so for some odd reason - perhaps morbid curiosity - I looked up his profile on Twitter. I was stunned with what I found there.He had sent out his last tweet only seven hours before, at 11:17pm, right before going to bed in his hotel room.

The tweet was normal stuff, a quick goodnight and a shout out to a few guys he knew about getting together the next day. He presumably then went to bed where, sometime before dawn, he suffered a massive heart attack and died in his sleep. That's it. A sudden and unexpected exit that hopefully, for him, was just part of a quiet dream that never ended and looked a lot like heaven.

It seems so stunning to me that it can just end like that and I admit that this tweet, which I read months ago, still haunts me in a way that I can barely put into words. It's not about what that writer would have done differently had he known it was his last night on this earth, it's about recognizing that none of us ever gets to know the exact moment of our end and, as such, we should focus on enriching what we know we can in our lives, namely that thing called "now".

Solomon warns us repeatedly in Ecclesiastes that time is fleeting and that life is a meaningless chasing after the wind, especially without God there to guide the journey. Yet so many of us, every single day, choose to go it alone. And yet there is never a "good" time to go. There's always unfinished business, a life still in full swing, a love still not fully claimed, a child still not fully raised or a grandchild not yet seen.  I don't think a single person on this earth dies without saying "Wait a second here.."

But time, that ultimate avenger, has no more seconds to give. And our best defense is in knowing that, with God at our side, we exposed time for what he really was anyway; just a shiny little thing between here and there, that may have framed our days, but not our lives.

Rear View Mirror

Don't look in your rear view mirror. There's nothing good back there. Just a lot of traffic or maybe a motorcycle cop. I really don't know why cars have rear view mirrors anyway. They serve very little purpose and even when being used while backing up they provide a false sense of security; you're still blind to about 70% of what's really back there. Which means you're not seeing the real picture.

Did you also know that you have a rear view mirror in your head? You do. Don't use that one either. It's even more dangerous than the one that's in your car, because it makes you look back at all your past hurts and all your past failures, at all those fears and insecurities that are lurking there over either shoulder, on any given day, like goons and goblins.

Checking the rear view mirror every now and then in your car or in your head is not necessarily a bad idea, to be safe or maybe just to reflect. But look back there too long and inevitably you're going to crash.

That's why God put our eyes in the front of our heads. He knew that it's better to live your life looking at the road ahead and finding wholeness in the opportunities He's placed before you, than focusing on what's behind you and ending up in pieces.

Besides...that stuff behind you? 70% of it isn't the real picture anyway.

Walk This Way ...

 “Lord, open my eyes and heart that I might learn what it means to walk with you.”


I don't know about you but it's easier for me to run to God with my problems than it is for me to just walk beside Him each day.  That's sad because I know which way He prefers it.  It's obvious because whenever I need Him? Guess who's right there? That's the glory part of God; even when you won't walk beside Him, he still walks right beside you.  Even when we insist on walking miles out of the way or completely in the wrong direction. That level of patience is divine indeed.

Have you ever wanted to just go on a permanent vacation? Just go off to a campground like in Big Sur or an island somewhere and just...stay! Just kick back. Chill. Put your naked feet into a cool, running stream or bask beneath the light shade of a palm tree under the warmth of an ocean sun. Enough already with the stresses of life and work. Enough with the cares and worries and debts and those marching ants of fear and kick back, long term, like...forever.

Sorry guys but that's heaven. Here, before long, the campground will get boring, the Coleman stove will break or, for no reason at all, even the squirrels will get annoying. Here, on that island, eventually you will have to start a fire and that will take hours, if not days, and coconuts are hard to crack and every now and then a fin will pop up just off the shoreline and ruin any thoughts of a nice swim.

Here, in this life, the only taste of peace we will ever find is in a good, long walk with God each day. With God comes the context for each moment you live, and nothing you could ever do or say will make Him love you any less. On these walks you give Him the chance to remind you that you are such a special creation, meant for a special purpose, made by the same special God that created Jupiter in one hand and monarch butterflies in the other. This alone will be enough to carry you through the peaks and valleys alike.

Because when you are walking with God you are never, ever lost.