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.

My Daughter’s Salvation

I can officially tell this story now. It’s been killing me for a couple of weeks, but I wanted to respect my daughter and only tell it once she’d had the chance to do so herself. Yesterday, at the close of our church service, during the invitation time, my daughter walked forward and told the church that she had given her life to Jesus Christ, her Lord and Savior. The church then got a good laugh out of her when the senior pastor asked whom she wanted to baptize her: me or the senior pastor.

“You,” she said, swinging a thumb in the senior pastor’s direction. It was a totally unscripted moment.

Which really, if you know my daughter, is absolutely perfect. But to be clear, she didn’t accept Christ yesterday; she did it a couple of weeks ago, during the big Discipleship Now weekend that my students participated in. Every year, around 20 some-odd churches in Gwinnett County and beyond pull together for one massive DNOW event. The past couple of years it’s been graciously hosted by Cross Pointe Church (senior pastor James Merritt) and over 800 students have come for a weekend of music, the Gospel and fellowship. This was my students’ third year participating.

Thus, it was my daughter’s third year participating. That’s what happens when you’re the preacher’s kid – you get to go to every event, regardless of whether or not you actually want to. We try and do our best (Rachel and I) to make it fun for Ella, and she genuinely enjoys the music and the freedom she has to run to the front of the stage and dance or hop around while the music plays. It’s part child’s play, part unfettered worship, and she only gets that chance during youth events like DNOW. So we let her go for the gusto.

Now, the past two years, she’s brought along books or a notepad for the sermon time. She would look up every once and while during the messages, but for the most part, she was more interested in the world of her own imagination than in the world of the Bible. And Rachel and I were okay with that.

See we’re weird – we’ve prayed for Ella’s salvation since before she was born (Jon’s too), and while we’ve always prayed that she would come to Christ while she was young, we’ve never felt the need to push her. Several of her friends have made confessions of faith long before Ella, and while she was always curious and asked plenty of questions (which we answered thoroughly without trying to push her one way or the other) she never seemed all that interested in making a decision herself.

In her mind there were three things she knew: Jesus was God, Jesus was Lord, and saying you believed that meant you had to get baptized, which meant getting wet in public in a very strange pool. Which meant, in her mind: no thank you.

But this recent DNOW changed things for her. She actually paid attention to our speaker for the weekend, the wonderful Clayton King. Clayton is a gifted speaker and an anointed preacher, and something about him – specifically, his humor – grabbed Ella’s imagination. On Friday night, she had her notebook and was doodling, but she would laugh right along with the audience, sometimes just before. Never took her eyes off her notebook, but was still engaged.

She was listening. Clayton had her attention.

So it was that on Saturday night, as we waited for the doors to the sanctuary to open, Ella walked over to me and said, “Daddy, will there be music tonight?”

“Yes, Ella,” I said.

“Well how long til that funny preacher man starts talking? I want to hear him because he’s funny.”

In retrospect, I know why that line struck me so hard, but in the moment it didn’t register. I just thought it was funny that my little girl wanted to actually hear the preacher preach. After years of being dragged to events like this on, she’d finally found a speaker who could hold her focus. It struck me as so funny that, when I realized Clayton King was seated on the row behind us, I made it a point to relate the story to him and introduce Ella. She smiled and waved coyly. Clayton waved back.

The music was great, but when Clayton started preaching, it just felt different. Ella was doodling, but she was sitting next to me, all snuggled up. Usually, that’s reserved for her mother, not me. As Clayton went through his message on the significance of Christ being Lord, I began to feel a familiar sensation. My heart began beating rather quickly. As Clayton neared the end of his message and began his invitation, I suddenly realized something.

I had the same sensation I’d had years ago when I gave my life to Christ. As Clayton continued talking about how Christ must be Lord of our lives if we’re going to be Christians, I began to pray: God, are you telling me I’m not saved?

I mean, I was sure of my salvation, but I’m nothing if not wiling to question things.

That’s when it became clear: it wasn’t me God was working on. It was Ella. And when Clayton gave the invitation to stand up and say “JESUS IS LORD!” if you had accepted Christ as your Savior, Ella turned to me, eyes full of confidence, and I nodded.

And she stood up and said, “JESUS IS LORD!”

I’ve been in ministry now for over 15 years, 12 of them as a youth pastor. In all of those years, that was the single-most precious moment. As someone prone to question whether or not the church still has what it takes to win the world to Christ, God reminded me very powerfully and personally on Saturday March 2 that the Gospel still changes lives, and always will. The church may sometimes limp forward, but the Gospel forever marches on, strong, bold, calling people to realize their sinfulness and Christ’s power to save them.

Ella went down front that night by herself. She didn’t ask me to come with her. And when she went down yesterday morning, it was completely on her own as well. Seven years of prayer for our daughter’s salvation came to fruition in a little girl who chose Jesus all on her own – and was so sure of it that the needed no one to guide her on the journey. She’ll be baptized soon, probably by the senior pastor, and I’ll be sure to post pictures.

Jesus saves. Never forget.

The Birthday Princess

Today is Ella’s seventh birthday, and we’ve been celebrating since this morning. She’s enjoyed some special treats throughout the day, and expects even more this weekend at her birthday party. I guess you could say we spoil her.

But we don’t see it that way.

We’re celebrating her life, which is something we don’t take for granted. Believe me when I tell you that there’s nothing on this earth that makes my heart swell like her slipping her hand into mine as we walk. Sure, the hand that’s reaching out for me has gotten bigger than I’d like to admit, and yeah, my heart breaks to think that I might only have a few more years of such unfettered, un-self-conscious love to enjoy, but it’s still overwhelming to be loved so innocently.

*****

Sometimes when I look at her, I find it hard to remember what she was like as an infant. She’s so much more herself now that’s she’s older that those early months/years seem a blur. To watch her float around the house, dancing to music only she can hear, making up words to songs that only she understands, is to watch my daughter without a filter. To see her as she really is, all the way down to her soul.

When she sits down to draw a picture now, a clear figure emerges – complete with perspective, shading, detail – and fits within a larger narrative picture. She tells you the whole story when she shows it to you, and even gives you a hint of character voices. It’s impressive.

She still sleeps like a wild animal. She’s all over the bed, arms and legs akimbo beneath the covers, breathing so deeply you would think her near comatose. Trying to wake her up on a school day is sometimes like arguing on the internet: pointless and not very productive. Then, on days when she doesn’t need to sleep late, she’s up by 6:20 and racing through the house like a deranged cat.

Talking to her has become an adventure. It’s a combination of her high-level reading skills, ever-listening ear, and decidedly animated friends that produces the first grade equivalent of a Robin Williams stand up, which is to say that she’s hysterical and full of non-sequiturs. What’s really funny is when she throws in an inflection that quite obviously came from someone else – an adult, one of her school friends, her mother – and it sounds like an entirely different person but still fully Ella. And the best part is, she doesn’t even realize she’s doing it.

*****

She looked at me this morning in the car. We were waiting for her bus to arrive, and she had this funny expression, a mix between sheer joy and hopeless confusion. Finally she looked at me, eyebrow raised and said, “You know I’m only three years away from ten, don’t you? Today I’m seven, then eight, nine, ten. I’ll be practically grown up. And then I’ll be a teenager. You can handle that, right?”

I looked at her and lied. “Sure I can handle that.”

But my heart knew it couldn’t. As much joy as there is in watching my child grow up, I can’t help but feel the tinge of sadness that comes as she passes ever farther away from the little girl she once was. I know I still have a lot more time with her before she starts hating my guts, but the weight of those days, the preciousness of them, makes me wish they could linger a bit.

And then she drops something on the floor, or accidentally spills grape juice on the freshly cleaned carpet and I wonder, “How long ’til college?”

*****

The birthday princess is growing up. The world is slowly becoming hers; I find that instead of her encountering things through my eyes or Rachel’s eyes, she’s seeing things through her own eyes more and more. And it’s a fascinating world to view, even if it sometimes gets a bit myopic (“When can I have a snack again? You said fifteen minutes fifteen minutes ago. It’s been fifteen minutes. So I can have a snack now, right? Because it’s been fifteen minutes. It has. Really. Why is your eyeball suddenly bleeding, daddy?”). Here’s to enjoying the ride through her childhood, to infinity and beyond.

Happy birthday, Princess Ella! Your mommy and daddy love you very much.

Does Every Life Have a Purpose?

I pray a lot over my kids. I pray for their salvation. I pray for them to be healthy. I pray for them to find the right spouse. I pray for them to be safe, be strong, be smart, be kind. But perhaps more than anything, I pray for them to discover and own their purpose for living.

It’s not exactly an uncommon prayer – I can think of other parents who pray the same thing for their children – but it’s an uncommonly strong desire of mine that they find themselves sooner rather than later. I don’t want them walking vacantly through their lives, wondering what they’re meant to do, only coming to discover their purpose and passion at a late age when changing their lives to accomodate their purpose is hard. I say that from experience. I pray for them out of that experience.

But sometimes, if I’m honest with myself, I wonder if every life has a purpose. If everyone is meant to do something with the time they have on earth. I’ve grown up hearing that each life does have a purpose; I’ve made it a point to study the Scriptures that reveal that purpose; I’ve spent hours exhorting people to find that purpose and fulfill their God-given reason for being. And yet still I occasionally wonder: does every life really have a purpose?

If the answer is no, then my prayers for my kids is a bit vain. in fact, if the answer is no, then my life is possibly vain – after all, who’s to say that what I’ve discovered as my purpose isn’t really just my feeble attempt to give meaning to life that’s ultimately meaningless? That my purpose isn’t just me manufacturing something to give my life direction so I could feel as grounded as those people who actually do have a purpose?

This sounds stupid. I know. But I’m getting somewhere with it. Just hold on.

In the end, thinking about whether life is meaningless or meaningful isn’t really a question. I believe, and am backed by Scripture, that each life has a purpose. The ancient Christians believed this too, and built it into the first question of the Westminster Catechism:

Q. 1. What is the chief end of man?
A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.

We exist to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. That’s our purpose. Each and every person is meant – created – so God would be glorified. That’s an awesome thought.

And it’s part of what I’m praying for my kids. That they’ll learn who they are in Christ, learn those things about themselves that makes them unique among his creation, and learn how to bring glory to God by being the fullest expression of themselves. Or to be more concrete: that my kids would find those things that they are good at, excel at those things, and bring God glory through the effort.

Jon loves to build. Ella loves to sing. Jon loves playing games and solving puzzles. Ella loves creating imaginary worlds with words and illustrations. Might those interests fall by the wayside as they grow up? Certainly. But they might also be the very things that God gifted them to do in this life, things that – in their doing – will bring God glory that no other person can bring Him.

Does that mean they’ll be famous? No.

But it means they’ll be fulfilled. Which is what I’m really praying for anyway. It’s what I want for my life, and for anyone who walks the face of the earth: to be fulfilled by being who God made them to be. Fathers, poets, politicians, teachers, firemen, soldiers, chefs, nurses, trainers, managers, pilots, preachers, singers, servers, and saints – plus every person in between. All living their lives to the fullest to bring glory to God. 

Does it mean they’ll never encounter hardship or heartache? No.

But it means that when they are tested, they’ll remember in the correct context that God works things out for our good (Romans 8:28), that He uses our life circumstances to help us achieve our purpose – bringing Him glory. See, we tend to take the glory for ourselves, even when we’re well-intentioned. Humility suffers at the hand of prosperity, and life has this way of bringing us back down too earth. It’s unpleasant to say, but all too often God only gets glory when we cannot have it for ourselves. We have to be reminded, sometimes frequently, that the glory belongs to Him alone.

So I pray for my kids. That they’ll learn these lessons early. That they’ll approach life humbly, and with great appreciation for the blessings that carry them each day. I pray that they’ll learn from my life that chasing after God may entail heartache and trial, but it will always produce God’s glory and our greatest joy.

And in typing that, I think I understand why I came to my purpose so late: in order to show my children what it means to live that way.

To God be the glory.

A Few Words About My Conversion

As a pastor, I’m used to being on the other end when someone has a religious experience. I know well the light in someone’s eyes when their mind and heart both arrive at the knowledge of truth and they embrace that truth with their entire being. It’s familiar to me, and yet it never grows old, because helping people come to know God in a deeper, more personal way, is why I do what I do.

But it’s been a long time since I was on the receiving end of a transformative moment. I should’ve known it would happen on a Sunday.

Now, let me preface this by saying that what I experienced on Sunday morning wasn’t a religious experience. It didn’t happen in a church. It didn’t come during a time of intense preaching or prayer or meditation. In fact, what happened to me occurred in the middle of a throng of screaming, hollering adults who watched a screaming, hollering throng or first grade girls shimmy, strut and dance their way across a gigantic blue mat.

On Sunday, in the middle of the Gwinnett Football League’s annual Cheer Off I became a cheerleader myself.

For someone who was skeptical of cheerleading (to say the least), it was the last thing I expected to happen. I’ve long been critical of the sport, and even that is being mild. I’ve made jokes, offering cutting remarks, and otherwise just been snotty about the whole enterprise. Part of it was insecurity – cheerleaders always represented a socio-economic strata that I could never touch, but part of it was just flat out ignorance.

So when my daughter decided she wanted to be a cheerleader, I was forced to eat my words. On Sunday, they were delicious.

Ella’s team, the 1st Grade Grayson Rams, won their grouping at the Cheer Off. I’ve included the YouTube link so you can see their performance, and if you watch it, you’ll not be able to miss the fact that there is one loud male voice throughout the entire piece. That would be me. Yelling like a goofball. Yelling like a maniac. Yelling, as it were, like a proud dad.

I didn’t even realize I was doing it. Not until we watched the video and Ella said, “Dad, stop it! That’s embarrassing.”

She was right. I yelled so loudly and for so long that my throat hurt the rest of the day. I tried fiddling with the video to see if I could get my voice to not stand out so much, but it proved to be impossible. But the more I think about it, the more I don’t care.

I want my daughter to know that her daddy loves her, and will yell like a moron to cheer her on. I want her to know that I don’t have a threshold when it comes to self-abasement on her account; I will gladly make myself out as an utter fool so she knows that at least one person has her back and believes in her. I will take the stares, the belittling remarks, the cutting comments, and the other assorted jibes because it’s more important for Ella to know that she’s supported than it is for me to save face.

It’s funny, but it took my daughter becoming a cheerleader for me to understand them; and in understanding them, I became one.

Ella has said recently that she doesn’t want to cheer next year. She’s interested in moving on to gymnastics or dance or something else that will tickle her fancy in the next few months. And that will be fine; we want her to experience many things in the hopes of helping her find what she’s really passionate about. Ifcheerleading isn’t it, then we move on to the next interest and go from there.

But if this is her only time cheering, what a glorious time it was. She not only had fun and made new friends, but she learned a lesson about hard work and practice, about how a large group can come together to achieve great things. She will go into retirement with a large trophy and an even larger smile.

I walk away finally getting it: we all need cheerleaders.