Falling Down

I fell through the ceiling in my hallway tonight. I was carrying a stupidly heavy box of books from my packed up office (a box that was so I heavy I actually thought to myself: I should probably just leave these downstairs), and since my attic doesn’t have decking (but does have a high number of obstacles to easy walking) I missed one of the joists and my left foot came crashing through the ceiling below.

It’s a good thing my butt already has a crack in it – as it is, I almost gave myself a second one. Luckily, nothing sensitive got injured, and all I ended up with was a three foot square hole in my ceiling and a baseball sized contusion on the right side of my butt (which was helpfully treated by my sitting on an ice pack for 20 of the most awkward and least attractive minutes of my life).

For someone who just quit his job and has a limited income right now, this was not a welcome experience. Doubly so since I also have the handy man skills of a six month old.

So now I’m sitting here, staring at the massive hole in my ceiling, and all I can think of is Michael Caine. Specifically, this clip:

I love that clip for a thousand different reasons, not the least of which is Michael Caine’s accent. The man just sounds cool. But I also love it for the truth it contains: we fall down so we can learn to rise. Life has its way of asking us to go backward in order to go forward; we’re not fond of that fact, but it’s true all the same.

I had coffee with a friend tonight (well, now that I think about it, I had coffee; he never drank a thing) and we talked about life and the changes that it holds. For me, the changes with my job and career track; for him, the adjustments to fatherhood and how his writing/creative life has been put on hold for the moment. As we often do, we reminisced about life in high school and college, and we each were able to identify a specific point, or a specific thing, that – if we could do it all again – was the one thing we’d do differently. We talked about that for a second, and then my friend said something like this:

“But you know, by not taking that path, we’ve become the men we are today. So in some ways, not making those choices taught us to make them when they counted.”

We fall down, so we can learn to pick ourselves back up.

I know plenty of people who’ve fallen down lately (and for some, it’s more accurate to say they’ve been shoved down cruelly or kicked to the ground). There are people who are simply looking for enough hope to make it through the end of the week, or the day, or their particular shift at work. They wonder if things will ever be in their favor; if they’ll ever reach that point where life feels like it’s moving forward more often than it feels like it’s going back. The dream is still out there, but they’re tired of it being beyond reach.

All I can say is that falling down isn’t the worst thing in the world. Going backward isn’t always bad. It’s staying there that’s the issue.

If we fall down, we must get up.

That’s the path of reward – that’s the life worth living. Even gaping ceiling holes can be patched and made good as new. But sometimes, we have to live through those moments to believe that.

Graduation Day – Final Sermon

* This is the manuscript for my final sermon as Youth Pastor at Chestnut Grove Baptist Church. After much prayer and thought, my family has stepped away from full-time pastoral work so I can pursue a career as a writer and speaker. I’ll have another job too (it’s almost a necessity) but my main focus is on expanding my writing and speaking opportunities.

To all of you who have supported or helped me in the ministry over the past fifteen years, please know that I am grateful for each of you. Your contributions, far more than my own, were the reason that God was able to transform so many students. Thank you for being such a blessed part of my service as a pastor.

*****

“For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.” – Romans 8:29

There’s a book that’s been sitting on my nightstand now for almost a month. It’s less than a hundred pages thick, and the stark white cover almost mocks me every time I walk by.

“Risk is Right” it tells me. John Piper says so.

I’m not a very risky person. Never have been. When I was a kid, my idea of taking a risk was dunking an Oreo into milk after I’d taken a bite, thus allowing for the potential of tiny black cookie crumbs to contaminate the pure white milk. It was my brother who jumped off the house with only a shopping bag for a parachute. It was my friends who snuck out of the house at night to sit on their front porches and feel the rush of the cool night air combined with the knowledge that they’d broken a rule. It was the heroes in my comic books that dared to do things that common sense and insurance agents said was, to put it bluntly, stupid.

But not me. I was the good kid. The (semi) obedient one. I set the example. I toed the mark. Always have.

Sure, there were times when I did things that were risky. Once, when I was about 15, my friends convinced me that it would be fun to camp out in my neighbor’s yard as a cover for sneaking down to a store that was rumored to sell cigarettes to under-age kids. I didn’t smoke, had no interest in smoking, but I was the straight-arrow, so they figured I could just walk in, be my normal polite self and procure a couple of packs of smokes for the heathens. The plan, they said, was flawless.

Except for the fact that I froze up. I couldn’t go inside the store. I had visions of the police being called, of my arrest and incarceration, of my parents sobbing as the judge threw the book at me and derailed my chance for college, which would derail my chance for a good job, which meant that I was inevitably headed towards a future of riding the rails like the hobos in Hardy Boy novels, destined to either help Frank and Joe solve a mystery or be a shadowy figure who foretold their doom.

So my friends took my learner’s permit and went inside to try and by smokes anyway. The clerk kicked them out, laughing. I was relieved until, as we crossed the street, I got hit in the knee by a car that didn’t have its lights on. I was knocked head over heels into a drainage ditch, convinced that my leg had been severed as punishment for being so stupid. I just knew I was going to die in that ditch, becoming a cautionary tale to other kids and a source of embarrassment to my family.

“Poor Jason,” my grandparents would say as they sat on the carport shelling peas. “He seemed like such a good boy.”

Obviously, my leg was fine. My knee did swell to the size of a mini-basketball, but I hid it from my parents by wearing baggy pants for two weeks and pretending my limp was just some new kind of strut. It is entirely possible that I was responsible for starting the gangsta lean. I should’ve thought to trademark it.

But that’s just not who I was.

I could tell you more stories, stories about how I didn’t take the right kind of risks, stories about how the risks I did take were either coldly calculated to the point that there was no risk at all, or wildly impulsive, resulting in a day-after sense of shame and regret that made me burrow deeper into myself. Bottom line is that I’ve never taken the right kind of risks. Never figured out that there are healthy and productive ones to be taken.

Which is why I picked up that book, “Risk is Right”, in the first place. I needed to know how to do what God was telling me to do.

I needed to know how to leave this church, step out in faith, and see where God would take me.

It’s funny that this is all coming together on Graduation Sunday. A lot of people are here to celebrate and acknowledge the preschoolers and high schoolers and college folks who’ve put in their time, completed a major season of their lives, and are moving on to other things. New things. Scary things. I look at Austin and Madison and Cody and Brandon and Jon and Haley and Victoria and I remember what it felt like to walk in their shoes. After high school, the choice was simple: college. After college, the choice wasn’t so simple, especially for me.

There’s not a lot of people banging down the door to hire English majors. Though there are a lot of English majors banging down doors to deliver you a fresh, tasty pizza in 30 minutes or less.

It’s funny that this annual ritual comes around and we stand in front of these kids and extol the virtues of risk, of stepping out, of change. We tell them to chase dreams and find their passions, and we slip them a couple bucks and we wait for the inevitable: for them to do what so many of us did, and settle down, find a job, start a family, and leave risk behind.

Change, for some of us, is best left to the younger. Or to the marketers behind clever political ads.

And yet change is at the very heart of what it means to be human. From conception onward, we are constantly in flux. Life is steady progression from one stage to the next, only we stop acknowledging it at some point when we feel safe. Maybe it comes when we make “enough money”. Maybe it comes when we get that dream house. Maybe it comes when we find a church we like that has people like us and we feel at home. I can’t say what it is for you, but for some of us out there, you know what I’m talking about.

You find that comfortable spot and you set up camp and you say, “This is where I’m supposed to be. I ain’t moving.”

Which would be great if life worked that way. But it doesn’t. We’re not meant to become static. We’re meant to be ever-changing. Just look at what Paul is saying in Romans 8:29 – we are meant to be conformed into the image of Christ.

Conformed. It’s a verb. It means continually shaped. Molded. Remolded. Occasionally taken back to the drawing board and started over again. It’s the truth about our lives and character: we are constantly being remade by the One who made us, the One who doesn’t have to be remade.

Have you ever thought about that? That God doesn’t have to be remade? I grew up hearing that “God doesn’t change” and while that’s true, it’s misleading. It makes God sound stale. It makes God sound like the old man who lived in my former neighborhood and threatened us with a shotgun for walking on the neighbor’s side of the property line.

“You’re almost on my grass! Do it again and I’ll shoot! Whippersnappers!”

The reason that God doesn’t change isn’t because He’s crusty, it’s because He is infinite. He is all things in all times to all people. That’s why He’s just as accessible to people today as He was in the time of Moses. That’s why His word still has wisdom and power in our modern world just as it did when the majority of people thought that sailing too far would make you fall off the edge of the planet. Because God is infinite, which means that He is always sufficient, it means that He never has to grow or change or learn. He simply is and that’s always enough.

So when we, who must change, decide that we’re not going to anymore, we establish ourselves as equal with God. The Bible says that’s blasphemy.

Our comfortable, familiar lives are blasphemous.

Now that’s a powerful thought. It’s no wonder we resonate so strongly whenever we hear speeches that implore us to strive for more. We are built for that kind of thing, and when we become too entrenched in a blasphemous lifestyle of complacency or apathy or fear, we sense deep within our hearts that God not only means for us to do more than just sit there, He is grieved by our self-satisfaction because it means we no longer listen to Him.

I was in that spot. I didn’t want to risk being obedient to God, which sounds pretty dumb for a pastor to say. But obedience to God meant walking away from a sure thing; it meant leaving behind friends and family and security and hope for a future. It meant stepping away from students that I’ve come to love very, very much. It meant defying conventional wisdom that life is better when we mitigate risk, settle in for something comfortable and dependable, and only consider stepping outside that zone if we’re sure that there’s something better waiting on the other side.

In fifteen years of preaching about having faith in God and obeying Him no matter what, this is the first time I’ve followed His leading without knowing where I’m going to land. It’s the first time I’ve truly put my life and the life of my family into the hands that formed the universe and said, “Okay. Show me what you’ve got.” It’s scary. There are days when I wonder what the heck I’ve done. There are days when I want to say, “No! I take it back!”

It’s like falling in love with the person you’re meant to be with for the rest of your life: there is no safe. It’s all risk – but you never feel more alive than when you take that chance. And you never feel more certain that you blew it than when you let it pass by.

Jesus knew all this stuff, of course. He knew when to push, when to withdraw, when to challenge and when to comfort. As it says in John 13:3, “Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God.” Jesus knew who he was, whose he was, and what he was supposed to do. This is the image that we’re being conformed into: it’s not one of weakness or timidity, it’s of power and love and sound judgment; it’s not one that is easily defeated, but it’s more than a conqueror; we are not conformed to the things of this world, the ideas and beliefs that tell us to settle and hold tight, but we are conformed to the image of the One who didn’t think equality with God was something to hold onto, who instead submitted Himself to death on a cross so that His Spirit might echo in our hearts, telling us the will of the Father is for us to “Go.”

So I’m going. It’s Graduation Sunday, after all.

What if you chose likewise? What if you didn’t accept the premise that safe is best? What if you put your hand into the hand of God and said, “Show me what you’ve got?” What would change? What would be different?

Because here’s the thing, and it’s unavoidable: the world is changing. Grayson is changing. The things that people hold as right and dear and true are changing, and we are called to be witnesses to them. But how can we tell them with a straight face, much less convicting power, that the greatest Truth in the world is that God loves them and wants to change them into the likeness of His Son, if we ourselves are content to sit tight and not change a thing?

Risk is Right, Piper says. So says the Lord. What will you do with that truth today?

Into The Deep Blue

Yesterday afternoon, I considered that my opening line for a talk to some at-risk students at Project LIFT might just be throwing up on the lovely blue carpet. It was a deep blue, like the far-out part of the ocean that people always warn you to avoid unless you’re an expert swimmer or have a boat. I’ve always been one to get nervous before speaking – and it’s probably more akin to anxious excitement than nervous dread – but I was especially amped up yesterday because it was a new experience for me. Sure, I’ve spoken to hundreds of youth over the past 15 years, but it was almost always within a church context, almost always on a passage of Scripture. This was different. This was me speaking to a theme, trying to inspire kids with tough backgrounds and even tougher realities to overcome the hardships before them and aspire for something more.

Sure, we were meeting in a church, but I was doing something new. And I knew I would either nail it or fail miserably.

I decided that nailing it was the preferable option. So I pushed my anxiety aside, kept my Whatchamacallit candy bar in my stomach where it belonged, and I started telling a simple story about a boy, his kinship with a pencil, and the journey of discovery they made together. (If you’re interested, here’s the PDF: Project LIFT – The Boy)

If you’ve ever spoken to teenagers before, you know they can be a tough sell. They’re smart, they’re savvy, and if they think for a second that you’re flim-flamming them, they’ll shut you out and move on. The students I spoke to yesterday were no exception. But as I went along with the story, trying my best to weave in humor and add in improvisational moments based on their responses to me, the most amazing thing happened.

They stayed with me.

Now, here’s where years of youth work comes in handy. To the average person, a teenager who is “staying with me” might seem a lot like a distracted, disinterested person. They rarely keep eye contact, they tend to shift in their seats, and every so often they’ll look up or down or around the room to see if maybe a magic fairy has flown in to grant wishes. It can take some getting used to. In fact, you really have to simultaneously speak to them and look for the cues that they’re with you: a smile, a subtle nod of agreement, leaning forward in their chair at a crucial point, tapping their neighbor on the shoulder and gesturing for them to pay closer attention. All of those signs were present yesterday afternoon, even as my talk soared past the fifteen minute mark.

I wrapped it up after 25 minutes, and the best thing in the world happened.

They wanted to ask me questions. Which means they had listened and heard something that piqued their interest. I even got asked two of my favorite questions: Have you ever thought about being a teacher? and Have you ever thought about doing stand up comedy?

(In case you’re wondering: yes to the first and no to the second.)

Afterwards, the folks who invited me to speak (without ever hearing me, might I add – brave folks) told me that it was the first time they could remember that the kids had ever sat through a presentation without having to be redirected.

“That never happens,” one worker said. “They actually listened to you.”

Yesterday, I took step beyond the familiar boundaries I’ve always known, and the ground beneath my feet was just as firm. I’ve always been told – and believed – that I was a good preacher; yesterday was the first time I’ve been told I was a good speaker. There may not seem to be much difference, but for me, there is. And since you might be asking yourself, “Self, what is the difference?”, I’ll tell you:

A preacher comes with a built in audience. A speaker has to earn one. God has always been gracious to me because He’s always provided me with a platform to speak from and people to speak to. I’ve never taken it for granted, but it’s always been built in for me because of my involvement with a church. Yesterday He showed me that he could open doors beyond a church (never mind that I was physically inside a church) and that I could earn the right to be heard. He showed me that He could do more with me than I’d imagined.

The best part of the day, however, the part that just made me fresh-from-the-oven-chocolate-chip cookie gooey inside, was when I got into the care with Rachel to leave. She silently grabbed my hand and said, “Good job.” I kissed her hand and said thanks. But then she added this, and I knew things were going to be okay:

“I loved hearing you speak like that. You really seemed to be in your element. It was awesome, and the kids really enjoyed it.”

One journey ending, another beginning. Into the deep blue we go.

For Those Who’ve Lost a Child

I’m currently working on a book of essays for people who have lost a child. I’m looking for folks both recently devastated by their loss and for people who have been able to heal over time to contribute quotes on any of the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

If you’d like to contribute, simply fill out the form below with your name, email, phone and story. If I can use your contribution, I’ll get in touch with you soon.

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When Anything Was Possible

This morning, because he was climbing the walls, I put my son in my car and took him for a drive. We ran an errand for work first, then headed down Highway 78, eastbound. We passed through Loganville, Between, Monroe…and as the mile markers swept by, Jon asked me where we were going.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I think I’m going to take you to where I went to college.”

“You’re gonna take me to your college?” he repeated.

“Yeah. The University of Georgia.”

“The Yoo-be-nursery of…how do you say it?”

I smiled. “The University of Georgia.”

“Oh. You’re gonna take me there?” he asked, looking at me in the rearview mirror.

“Yes.”

“Okay. Can we get ice cream?”

The great thing about my alma mater is that it’s less than an hour’s drive, yet feels like going to another planet. As we turned onto Milledge Avenue, Jon immediately started asking questions. “Why are there so many houses? Why do people have couches in the yard? Why do they have bulldogs on everything?” It was non-stop.

I turned into the Butts-Mehre Building parking lot, thinking that I’d take him to the sports museum inside and show him the glory, glory of old Georgia. We walked in and in quick order took pictures with the 1980 National Championship trophy, Herschel Walker’s Heisman Trophy, and a very nice lady who knew where the restrooms were (that was Jon’s idea). But all of that lasted less than a minute; suddenly, Jon wanted to know where the scientists were.

“I want to see the scientists, like me.” (Special thanks to my brother- and sister-in-law Terrell and Julie White for sending Jon a Big Bag of Science Experiments for his birthday. My kitchen floors will never be the same.)

So we left the Butts-Mehre, went down by Foley Field (Jon had zero interest in the baseball diamond), turned by Stegeman Coliseum (he wasn’t interested in that either) and zipped over towards the Biology, Chemistry and Food Sciences buildings. He begged me to find a place to park so he could “see the scientists make stuff up”, but I couldn’t find a spot, and wasn’t sure we could get into some of the labs anyway.

“That’s sad,” said Jon. “Don’t people want to see scientists?”

I’ve yet to tell him what Bear Bryant said on that issue: “80,000 people never showed up to watch a chemistry test.”

We turned left on East Campus Avenue and drove behind Sanford Stadium. I turned left again on Baldwin Street and showed him Park Hall. “That’s where daddy spent most of his last two years of college.”

“That looks boring,” he replied.

We turned right onto Milledge once more, and then made a right onto Broad Street. I parked downtown near the Arches and we took a stroll across North Campus. We looked at squirrels, trees, the Chapel Bell, the Law Library Atrium, and the inside of the main library. I walked him back down to Sanford Stadium and made the mistake of telling him that’s where all the dead Ugas are buried. After that, he wanted to talk about nothing else.

It was a nice trip, despite the fact that the campus looks almost nothing like I remember it. Fifteen years after I left, the university has become what former president Charles Knapp had dreamed: a top-flight center of education. I marveled at how young the students are compared to when I was in school; how many of them still think they’re invincible enough to smoke; how many of them seem far more determined than I was when I roamed the same grounds.

As we walked back to the car, I took Jon to Park Hall, where the English and Classics departments are headquartered. I snapped a picture in front of my old haunt, and recalled when a professor stopped me on the front steps and told me that, with a bit of revision, some of my pieces would be press-ready. And then the professor offered to send them to his friend at The New Yorker – and could almost guarantee they’d see print.

I stood there and watched that memory play out one more time: I shook his hand and told him thank you, but no. I wasn’t prepared to face rejection. He asked me to reconsider; told me that of all the students in my “Writing for Publication” class, I was the only one to demonstrate real potential.

I told him no a second time. Then I walked away.

It’s been fifteen years, and I still remember that. In college, so the saying goes, anything is possible. You’re not who you were, not yet who you’ll be. You’re a bundle of potential and passion and purposeless energy. You’re waiting to be aimed somewhere and to see how far you’ll go.

At least, that’s the way some people were. I wasn’t. I’m 37 now, and am just finally reaching my “anything is possible” phase. It took me this long to realize the things about myself that are good and worthy and deserving of people’s attention. Today, I wouldn’t hesitate to take that professor’s hand and say, “Let’s sit down and make those revisions now. Why wait?” I would whole-heartedly accept his offer and be so excited about even the possibility that I might get read, much less published.

But I am that person today because I wasn’t that person then. I am a husband and father and writer today because I couldn’t see myself as any of that then.

Sometimes, we take the path we think we’re supposed to take because we have a hard time imagining ourselves take any other path. We choose what we know because we’re afraid of what we don’t. And sometimes, we discover that we end up where we started; we come back to the path we turned away, prepared to take it and see what happens.

That’s what I felt today, standing on a campus that isn’t the same as it was fifteen years ago. But then again, neither was the man standing there. Today, with my son in tow, I went back in time and realized I hadn’t missed my moment; I’d just been preparing for it.

Carpe diem, right?

Anything is possible. Even today.