These dreams are all very similar, but never repeating. They are all incredibly detailed and incredibly vivid; and they all occur from my point of view, in my bed, in my room. They tend to be simple, but that’s the problem. I have a dream that something mundane is happening in my room, and when I wake up, the dream was so perfect in every detail that I cannot perceive any difference, and therefore have no idea that I’m actually awake.

Once I had a dream that I was talking to a friend of mine about what to give another friend for her birthday. I woke up and was too groggy to realize my friend wasn’t in my room at 3am. So I kept talking to her. In fact, I was awfully frustrated when I submitted a few gift ideas and she refused to respond. I didn’t realize it’d been a dream until my roommate, Davy, woke up and asked me who I was talking to.

Forget showing up at school naked, that was humiliating. And worse, these dreams are not as infrequent as I’d like them to be. A few months ago, I dreamt I was writing in bed and woke up because I’d lost the pen cap. I searched for it for about 10 minutes.

But my absolute favorite of these peculiar dreams occurred at the beginning of my sophomore year of college. As I’ve said, the dreams only happen when I’m good and stressed, and my sophomore year was a prime occasion. I’d moved into an apartment with two of my friends, equally nerdy and equally unashamed of it. I’d spent the previous summer in San Diego, CA with Campus Crusade for Christ, where a spectacularly pathetic longboarding accident left me with 19 stitches in my chin and broke 6 of my teeth.⁴ I’d just started a new campus job as a shift supervisor for the campus computer labs.⁵ And among my 21 credits for the semester, I was taking organic chemistry, physics, and microbiology. Stress? Nah…

For about a month, I had these dreams every night. It was awful, but of all the humiliating dreams, one stands out as my favorite.⁶

In my dream, I was lying in bed awake, because I’d heard the front door open. I knew my nerd housemates were asleep, so there was no reason the door should be opening at all. And instantly I knew, in that peculiar way you simply know things in dreams, that someone had broken into our apartment and his sole purpose was to do me great bodily harm. As I lay in bed, I heard him creeping down the hall. I heard him grasp the doorknob to my room and woke with a start.

Oh no, I thought, he’s coming for me.

I leapt out of bed to the side opposite the door and frantically searched for something with which I might defend myself. There, quietly resting on my nightstand was what any sane man would use to defend himself from a violent and likely well-armed assailant – my cell phone. You know, those sweet, silver Nokia bricks that used to be so popular because they were so conveniently free.

I grabbed it and swung it forward in triumph. I was saved. I held it in front of my like a pistol and shouted,⁷ “Stay back!”

In my exuberance, I yanked the charging cord from the phone and it lit up, illuminating the whole room quite well and revealing what had always been there – no one at all.

“I’m an idiot,” I muttered in defeat. My brain mocked me for days.

Dreams. They don’t fight fair.⁸

——-

¹ Peculiarities. Yes, I have many of them. Shh…

² I woke up screaming from that nightmare. To this day, I can remember it perfectly.

³ Going to an all-male high school had its benefits. It’s hard to be embarrassed about going to school naked when everyone has the same … parts.

⁴ Another fun story. I’ve got plenty of them.

⁵ Like I said, I’m a nerd.

⁶ Among my peculiarities is my definition of fun. Therefore, my definition of favorite is also a little special.

⁷ Yes, you read that correctly: shouted.

⁸ R.B., this one’s for you. I hope there’s some consolation in knowing you’re not alone.

Monday was one of the former for me. There wasn’t some catastrophic event, but it was the culmination of a few stray thoughts and a lot of previously-ignored emotions – the perfect recipe for a total breakdown. It wasn’t pretty. And I’d rather forget it happened. But something in me can’t ignore it.

On Saturday, I went for a bike ride and was nearly hit by a corvette. I think the driver thought that stop signs were optional for muscle cars. I’m thrilled he had a last-minute change of heart.

Later, a friend heard about it and jokingly asked whether I’m just that accident prone or if my luck is just that awful. She’s good friend with a wonderful sense of humor, but that was the wrong question at the wrong time. It wasn’t that she meant anything by it, but I’ve been both blessed and cursed with a mind that never stops thinking. So that joke bounced my around my head like a pinball for days. In the last three years, my family’s lost my mom, my brother, and my cousin. At the end of August, I totaled a car I’d owned for three weeks. And at the moment, every plan I had post-graduation has gone spectacularly wrong. So, it’s hard not to wonder if I have an invisible albatross chained around my neck. For the record, those are the kinds of thoughts that will kill you. I’m sure of it.

Monday was rough for me, one of those odd days with loads of activity, but zero sense of accomplishment. For me, an unproductive day is worse than death. I don’t mind the days when I never see another person or never leave the house, but I’d rather break a bone than go to bed with feeling like I’ve accomplished nothing. It’s not that I did nothing on Monday, but I did lots of things that felt meaningless and trite, regardless of their necessity.

After admitting defeat for the day, I began working on another project that requires me to sort through my brother’s photographs and select my favorites. My brother was an extraordinary photographer. So picking a few favorites out of thousands of photographs is impossible. And the tears aren’t helping either.

Call me silly; call me foolish; but occasionally, I get so bogged down by my emotions that it’s hard to think and function normally. Monday was one of those occasions. I quit sorting through Robert’s pictures for the day and sat at my desk, staring at a blank computer screen. I ate dinner, though I couldn’t tell you what it was. And then I found myself wandering the house with a head so full of thoughts I couldn’t think at all. I was useless, and I was completely alone. Those moments are hard for me. I’m an introvert through and through, but I’m also a verbal processor. When I’m overwhelmed and have no one to talk to, I’m in trouble. Instead of sitting around until some temptation showed up, I did the only thing that made any sense – I walked out of the house and wandered around the neighborhood for half an hour. And about 10 minutes into my walkabout, I started praying. It wasn’t intentional. Word’s started spewing out of my mouth and the only person to whom I could direct them was God. This wasn’t some happy, sanitized, Christian prayer walk where you count your blessings and quietly sing kumbaya. It was a slow walk with weak, anxious, self-centered whining. It was every doubt I’ve had for months laid out before me. It was ugly. But it was also honest.

Somedays, hope is chore, a burden. But how often do I forget that we have a God who loves to carry our burdens? How often do I insist on fixing my own problems and being my own savior? How often do I fail miserably?

At that time Jesus declared, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.   – Matt. 11:25-30

Oh, how I love Jesus. He speaks of heavenly mysteries as if they were easy to comprehend. He introduces a paradox here. God is a mystery, a riddle that can only be solved by invitation. “No one knows Him unless they know Me, but no one knows Me unless they know Him.”

But does He stop there? Does He leave us in our ignorance, helpless to ever know God at all? No. He opens His arms wide and beckons us. He reintroduces Himself to humanity. You’d think that the God who orchestrated the flood,¹ the plagues, and, well, the Old Testament would introduce Himself with fire and stone tablets and a big stick, because I’d wager that most of us think of God primarily as the cold, distant disciplinarian of the cosmos. But Jesus, the spitting image of His Father, steps forward, not with a stick, but with all the tenderness of a thousand doting grandmothers, and says, “Come.”

Monday night, that’s the God I met. Wandering the streets, muttering my complaints and fears until I could no longer stand, I walked right into the arms of a God who never promised to make life easy, but did promise to be there for us when it’s hard.

Are you anxious? Are you worried? Are you weary or heavy laden?

Come again.

Come to a God who is not only able to care for you, but He also wants to. Come to a God bigger than your fears and your worries. Come to a God who promised to be near the broken-hearted. He’s the God of the weary, the Servant of the weak, the Friend of the scorned, and the Hope of the downcast. He champions the cause of the broken and abused; He heals the lame; He raises the dead.

This is our God. This is our King. He is compassion embodied and love personified. And when hope is a burden, I will go to Him and find rest for my soul.

¹ Not a Halo reference.

I find that our hearts¹ are similar. Should one manage to suffer a serious tragedy, those traumatic events change a person. The magnitude of that change is directly proportional to the magnitude of the trauma. Some are minor events, like the time my guitar was stolen in Mexico; they leave a mark, teach you a few lessons, but they don’t generally impede or redirect the direction of your life. But sometimes we suffer major trauma – events that have the potential to shake and even destroy our faith forever. An instructor recently told my class that, in his opinion, those major trauma events only normally occur two or three times in a person’s life.

I really, really want to believe he’s right.

January 9, 2008, I literally moved 1000 miles from home, to Kansas City, Missouri to enroll in a small, non-accredited Bible school called the Forerunner School of Ministry. When I boarded the plane in El Paso, Texas, I was pretty convinced that I’d lost my mind. I made the decision to move so quickly I hadn’t had enough time to even line up a place to live. To this day, it was the craziest thing I’ve ever done, but I knew the Lord had told me to go. So I went.

If I had known then what the next three-and-a-half years had in store for me, I doubt I would have ever boarded that plane. Six months after I moved, my mother passed away unexpectedly. She was alright one day; the next, she never woke up. I’ll never forget the sheer terror in my father’s voice when he called me that night. I’d never heard that kind of panic in that man’s voice before and I hope to never hear it again. That was the absolute worst summer of my life.²

The death of a parent is enough to jar anyone’s faith, but my story doesn’t stop there. Exactly eight months after my mother passed away (which was also my 24th birthday), my older brother Robert discovered a small lump on his testicle. Within two weeks, he was in the hospital, being treated for the mother of all aggressive cases of testicular cancer.³ Not to sound self-centered, but that was the worst birthday present ever. And it was the beginning of Robert’s 15-month, heroic battle with cancer. Call it the gift that kept on sucking.

I spent those 15 months praying with all the faith I had. I did my best to rally as many of my friends and family to pray for Robert as I could. The full story is long and painful, but I will say that my brother fought for his life like Rocky Balboa and John McClane combined. Unfortunately, he passed away May 29, 2010.

The last few years of my life have been the traumatic equivalent of a full-body tattoo. I’m hoping that this whole painful story accounts for at least two of my three major trauma events, but who knows? My academic career here at FSM has been anything but enviable, but there’s one thing that I can say with certainty – I have changed.

When I got back to school in August, I was immediately confronted with a problem – I couldn’t pray. I was beginning my senior year at a school that prides itself on the fact that every student is required to spend 24 hours per week in prayer, and I couldn’t pray. For weeks, I went to the prayer room, stood in the back, and let hundred of students pray around me while I fought to both stay in the room and to not slap the most zealous of those students in the face. My heart was one giant open wound and I did not handle it well.

One night, a friend of mine walked up to me and rebuked me. She was incredibly gracious, but her words stung nonetheless. She said, “Joe, I’m not going to pretend that I know what you’re going through. I don’t. And honestly, I hope I never will. But I do know this: the only place where you’re going to find any healing or comfort is in Him. So  kick, scream, cry, or whine, but you have to start praying again. Otherwise you’re going to stand back here forever and become a useless lump on the wall.”

I thrive on confrontation, but even I can recognize when I’m completely beat. She was right and I couldn’t argue for a moment. But it didn’t change the fact that I didn’t know what to pray. So I took one step forward and took a cue from Psalm 62:8:

Trust in Him at all times, O people;

pour out your heart before Him;

God is a refuge for us.

I started praying the only words that I had in me, “Jesus, I’m in an incredible amount of pain. I’m weary and I’m confused. And I don’t know if I really trust You anymore. So if You really love me, I need You to prove it. If You’re really good, if You really care about me, if You really care about how I feel and how much pain I’m in, You’re going to have to show me.”

Now, that prayer sounds pretty stupid. What right do I have to ask the God of the universe for anything? For that matter, why should He answer at all?

Those questions are perfectly valid, but I couldn’t have cared about them any less at the time. That night, I was in too much pain to filter my prayers and say anything remotely “proper.” All I knew was that I hurt and I wanted it to stop.

Over the next few months, I discovered that my prayers were actually scriptural. In Isaiah 7:10, the Lord gives a wicked king a promise and backs that promise by actually commanding Ahaz to ask for a miraculous sign as proof of the word Isaiah delivered.

Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz, “Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven.”

In Mark 9, Jesus meets a father and his demonized son. The father is clearly desperate for his son to be set free and finally breaks down and asks Jesus for help.

And he said, … “But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” And Jesus said to him, “If you can! All things are possible for one who believes.” Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!”

Do you know what happened next? One might think that the Lord would ignore the father because his faith wasn’t perfect; or at least, that’s what we would do in Jesus’ shoes. But His ways aren’t our ways, are they? No. Instead of walking away, Jesus immediately turns and casts the demon out of the boy.

Similarly, everybody in the church dogs Thomas. Doubting Thomas they call him. That title is completely unfair. We forget that it was Thomas in John 11 who showed the most courage among the apostles. There, Jesus announces that He’s going to Bethany to raise Lazarus from the grave, but the disciples don’t want to go because they’re afraid the Pharisees with kill them all. But who stood up in that moment? Thomas. And what did he say?

So Thomas, called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we might die with Him.”

 

Thomas loved Jesus enough to die with Him at Bethany. After losing my brother, I can say this with certainty: Thomas loved Jesus so deeply that upon Jesus’ death, his heart was shattered. It’s not easy to believe in anything after you take a blow like that. When the disciples (who, for the record, had already seen the risen Lord for themselves) come to Thomas and tell him the news, is it any wonder that Thomas should have such trouble believing? My vote is that we ditch that over-critical title and replace it for something else. How about Honest Thomas? Because that moment he made his famed request in John 20:25, he was being just that.

But he said to them, “Unless I see in His hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into His side, I will never believe.”

We Christians are so silly. We want everything to be so cut and dry – either a person believes or he doesn’t. If it were up to us, Thomas would’ve been excommunicated on the spot. But how does Jesus respond? Did He deride and lambast Thomas for his lack of faith? No. When Thomas was too scared, too weak to believe, Jesus showed up in that upper room specifically for Thomas. Despite our heavy criticism, Jesus wasn’t reluctant to respond to Thomas’ pathetic plea. He walked through a wall, opened up His hands, and said, “Here I am, Thomas. I’ll do whatever it takes to prove to your heart that I’m real.”

My prayer that night was a bit unorthodox. I’ll freely admit that. But I have a few friends and family members mourning the loss of loved ones who might need the Lord to show up in their lives and prove that He really cares about them. Maybe you’ve suffered some sort of trauma too. Maybe it’s major, maybe it’s minor. It doesn’t really matter how big or bad the trauma was. If you need Him, you need Him.

Remember what David said in Psalm 34:18:

The Lord is near to the brokenhearted

and saves the crushed in spirit.

There are no conditions to that statement. If you’re hurting, the Lord is near you, whether you feel it or not.

Paul also wrote something of import in Romans 8:31-32:

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?

The only other thing I can say is that He’s met me while I’ve been stuck and faithless. In all my pain, confusion, and unbelief, He showed up. He proved His love to me over and over again since that night, because He’s good. And He’s faithful to answer when His children cry out to Him.

I may carry these scars for the rest of my life, but I have a Savior who is bigger than all that trauma. To this day, He’s been faithful to clean each and every wound that I’ve carried, not because I’m anything special, but because He is exactly who He promised to be.

And that’s why I love Him, because He never gave up on me.

¹ Obviously, I’m speaking of the heart metaphorically.
² Before I’m ripped to shreds by my sister-in-law, that was also the summer that my younger brother got married. That wedding was awesome. The summer became awful later, but not by Megan’s doing.
³ OK. Testicular cancer is definitively a man’s disease. Maybe I should have said, “the father of all aggressive cases of testicular cancer.”

That sounds a little crazy. But be patient with me.

When my brother passed away, there were a number of well-meaning friends who, even if only temporarily, shook their fist at God and said He was just too cruel to allow such a thing to happen, as if it were His fault. As if He had caused my brother’s cancer in the first place.

Here’s the deal: the world as we know it is not the world as God intended it. Adam and Eve were formed from the dust of the earth and placed in a sinless paradise. Everything was perfect. Everything was life-giving and clean. And here’s the clincher: we were booted from that paradise not because God is cruel, but because we disobeyed. If you look at Genesis again, God says something very odd.

“You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” + Gen 22:16-17

But here’s the thing, when Adam and Eve did finally eat the fruit from that tree, God didn’t smite them. He just kicked them out from the garden. Odd, huh? He never said He’d kill us. He just said we’d surely die.

John sheds a bit of light on the apparent contradiction. In John 1:4, he’s talking about Jesus and states that, “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.”

Between the two, there’s a concept forming. If our life is in Him, then being cast from His presence surely meant death for us. Separated from Life Himself, God didn’t have to kill us. He just let us walk to the bitter end of the path we’d chosen – a life without Him. And that’s when everything headed south.

We sinned. And because God is just, we got kicked out. Now we’re left to reap the consequences. One of those consequences is death; another is cancer.

We were made for paradise, not decay and death. So how difficult is it that we have to face a disease so ruthless that it begins with our own cells mutating and fighting against us? We have no tools, no great coping mechanisms for such adversity. At best, we hurl awful chemicals at the problem and hope that it dies before those chemicals kill us.

Cancer isn’t God’s fault. It’s among the worst consequences of our rebellion against Him. That’s why we need a Savior. But that’s where the good news comes in: when He gets here, it’s going to be spectacular.

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.’

“And He who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’” + Rev 21:1-5

It’s not that I don’t sympathize with my friend. I do. I wept with him today while we were talking. I’m just a big fan of proper perspective. But one perspective to maintain in all that chaos is this: cancer and death are brutal on the human psyche. We’re not prepared to deal with them and we never will be. We can’t ever seem to come to terms with the death of a loved one because we were never supposed to. We were meant to live forever. But now that we’ve screwed up the original plan, all we can do is cry out in the pain to a God who loves mercy.

And that’s where my hope lies – in Him.

“Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him,

On those who hope in His mercy,

To deliver their soul from death,

And to keep them alive in famine.” + Ps 33:18-19

I hate those weeks because my head gets so filled with thoughts that it feels as if it’ll fracture into a million pieces from all the stress. If I had time for peace and quiet, I’d make it; but that just hasn’t been an option. Sure, rest would be nice, but what do you do when rest is impossible? More importantly, when life gets too hectic to allow you to satisfy every desire, what do you allow to take the ultimate priority?

Nearly four years ago, I had a dream that drastically changed the way I think. In the dream, I was sitting in a relatively small room with a bunch of friends. The room was mostly filled with a table that we sat around on long benches that were pushed against the wall. That night, the benches were completely filled except for the one seat directly across from me, next to the door.

My friends and I gathered around the table and began to talk and joke around. I kept looking to my right and left, talking to friends on either side, laughing and joking as if this was something we did every week. After a bit of this odd conversation, I turned from my left to my right and was surprised to find the seat across from me occupied. I stopped talking, dumbstruck at the beauty of the woman sitting across from me.¹ She was staring directly at me with such intensity that I could have sworn she could read my thoughts. I stared back at her for a moment, but quickly turned away because I couldn’t find a word to say; her beauty rendered me speechless.

The oddity of her presence was that no other person in the room ever so much as acknowledged her presence. And she didn’t say a word. She just sat there and stared at me. I resumed talking to my friends on the either side, hoping to buy time until I could find something to say to her. She was so beautiful all I wanted to do was talk to her, but it seemed that no clever word ever existed in her presence. And I was terrified.

Now, let me explain. When I say this woman was beautiful, I don’t mean that she just had a good-looking face. No, that’s too trite. She wasn’t a just creature who happened to be gifted with beauty. Her beauty was deeper. I was something she exuded, something that emanated from her. She didn’t possess beauty like the actresses and models idolized in this country. She *was* beauty, as if the quintessence of beauty could take form and inhabit my dreams. It may sound strange, but trust me, such beauty is as terrifying as it is fascinating. It wasn’t some sickly sweet puppy-dog fascination born in me as I saw her face; it was cowardice, as my every insecurity stood before me like an army battalion with guns aimed directly at my heart.

I turned to the people at my left, half listening to their conversation as I sought even a single syllable to speak to this woman. Nothing came. I turned to the right in my frantic search, as if my friends might have those precious words written on their foreheads. Not a chance. I turned back and forth, back and forth; each time trying to steal a glance at the beauty before me. Each gaze made me die a little death longing for another glance, but simultaneously disrupted any hope of regaining speech in her presence. And the most perplexing part of this strange encounter is that she never looked at anyone but me, as if she was looking for my undivided attention.

I turned once more and noticed that her expression had changed. No longer pleased to be in the room, she looked as if she was on the verge of tears. Our eyes met and she suddenly stood and bolted from the room. I knew that her tears had been my fault. I found courage somewhere and leapt over the table in a fashion that would make Spiderman proud.² I found myself in a long, dark corridor. I couldn’t see the woman, but knew she’d gone and ran after her.

When I finally caught up, I called to her. She turned and it was obvious that she’d been weeping from deep sorrow and anguish. Never in my life have I caused someone that kind of distress. It was awful to see, and all the more painful knowing that it was my fault. I asked her what had happened to make her leave our little gathering. Still weeping, she said, “You don’t get it, do you? I wasn’t there for a party. I wasn’t there because I needed a good laugh. I was there for you. I was there because I want your whole heart, but all you were giving me was little glances. I couldn’t bear it any longer, because every glance was nothing more than a tease to me. I want your whole heart, but I can’t take that kind of heartache. So I left.”

Her words stabbed me in the chest. While I stood reeling from the pain, she looked me in the eyes, still weeping. She was no less beautiful for the tears, but they evoked a sorrow in my soul I can never hope to describe. I read the anguish in her eyes as if it were written in them. I stared, completely aghast, trying to find the words to express how sorry I was, how my insecurities and fears had held me back, how her beauty so terrified me. But looking in her eyes, all those words fell useless to the ground. And she turned and walked away.

I woke and sat in my bed for what seemed an eternity. The beauty’s eyes were scarred in my memory; her tears were my torment. I spent the day quietly praying about the dream as I helped my brother clean his house. Finally, the Lord answered.

“Joe, in that dream, I am that woman.³ Daily I look at you. Daily I try to gain your attention. Daily I hope to win your whole heart. But all you give Me is little glances – fifteen or twenty minutes as if I’m some sort of hobby. I am not a hobby. I came for your heart. Will you give it to Me? Or will you continue to break mine by glancing at Me as if I’m some sort of pass time? Will you love Me?”⁴

It’s been four years since I had that dream, but it comes to mind nearly every day. It’s an idea I cannot shake: have I given Jesus all of me?

When the weeks get long, hard and utterly panicked, we all have to make certain priorities. It’s part of life; we can’t do everything we want to do. As for me, let the clothes pile up; let my facial hair grow long and itchy; let my bed be unkempt like my roommate’s hair. The Lord’s asked for my whole heart, and I will not take that for granted until the day I stand before Him and see those eyes flooded with tears, not of anguish, but of joy.

“His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little… enter into the joy of your master.”

+ Matt 25:21

¹ Don’t ask me to describe her. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. Chalk it up to the oddity of trying to remember a dream.
² Don’t judge me; it was a dream.
³ Please understand, I am not claiming that God is a woman. I’m just saying that’s the symbol He picked to get through my thick skull in that dream.
⁴ Now, Song of Solomon 4:10 is often quoted around IHOP. I’m not saying that the Lord isn’t pleased with our efforts to love Him, however small they may be. He was challenging my attitude toward Him, not my attempts to love Him. And either way, I side with C.S. Lewis, who said in The Problem of Pain, “Love, in its own nature, demands the perfecting of the beloved… Of all powers he forgives most, but he condones least: he is pleased with little, but demands all.”

This afternoon, I was struck by how odd my memory can be. My mind so readily associates specific actions with past events that it’s almost scary. For instance, I can’t listen to Bob Schneider’s song “Gold in the Sunset” without thinking of the day six years ago when I sat on Mission Beach in San Diego, listening to the whole album after a long shift at Sea World.¹ I also can’t wash dishes without hearing my friend Chris saying, “If it ain’t foamin’, something’s roamin’.”  And as I discovered today, I can’t bake challah bread without being reminded of the last weekend in May 2010 – the weekend my brother went to be with Jesus.²

We’d all gathered at Robert’s father-in-law’s lodge in Burnet, TX for a a weekend of family, jet skis, and Texas barbecue. It was utter chaos. The weekend had been planned months in advance, but the week before Robert’s doctors had informed him that we’d exhausted every treatment option Western medicine could offer. The cancer was still running rampant in his body and the best they could do was make him comfortable and try to keep him from having any seizures. I’m pretty sure he knew that weekend was going to be his last, but I thought we still had a few more weeks.

It was one of the strangest weekends of my life. On one hand, we had all of Aimee’s siblings, their kids, and all of our family there. It was a hot Texas weekend and we had a lake, boats, and loads of food at our disposal. On the other hand, my brother was getting weaker by the hour and was tethered to a ventilator because the tumors in his lungs were making it difficult for him to breathe. Adding to the chaos, Robert’s closest friends were flying in from all over the country to see him. Emotionally, it was completely bizarre. How could one weekend be simultaneously fun and heartbreaking?

I’d been tasked that weekend with cooking on meal for the group, but I decided to up the ante by baking a few loaves of challah from scratch. I’d been practicing for months and was anxious to show off my culinary skills. After my dad and I arrived at the lodge, I went to the store and picked up all the ingredients. This introvert was emotionally overloaded and needed some time alone to settle his thoughts. When everyone else called it a night and we’d comfortably settled Robert in bed, I wandered into the kitchen and got to work. By the time I finished kneading and braiding the loaves, it was 1 o’clock. So I stowed them in the refrigerator and made my way to bed in the dark. I’d hoped to fall asleep quickly. Instead, I spent the next hour listening to Robert’s ventilator and laid in bed with tears streaming down my face. I can’t call it weeping. There weren’t the normal sobbing, heaving breaths; there were just the tears, quietly making their way out of my eyes and down my cheek to the pillow.

Eventually I fell asleep, but only for thirty minutes. I woke up to the sound of Robert’s groans and coughs as he tried to re-situate himself in his bed. I woke up and spent the next half hour getting Robert comfortable, only to find that no number sheep would ever coax me back to my slumber. Too awake to sleep and too dazed to do anything mentally taxing, I found a spot on the couch and read through 1 John. After that, I grabbed my phone and called a friend who I knew would be awake.³ We spent the next twenty minutes on the phone. Jaye said little. I just wept. Robert had always been the strong one. It was frightening to see him so weak, so frail. Still, it helped to hear the voice of a friend, even if neither of us could find the words I needed to hear. I didn’t get incredible council, but I did get a long-distance hug.

After the call, I did little but stare blankly at the open pages of my Bible, too emotionally drained to even think. At about 5 o’clock, Robert’s daughter Emeline woke up and wandered downstairs, planning to wake up her grandmother and get an early start on the day with a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

“Gwammy? Gwaaammyyyy? I’m hungwy…”

“Emeline, shhhhh. You don’t have to wake up Grammy. What do you need?”

“Unk Joe? Yo’ ‘wake?”

“Yeah, sweetheart. What do you need?”

“I want some bweakfast. I want ceweal.”

“What about bread? You want to help me finish baking some bread?”

“No. I want my ceweal.”

“OK, Em. Let’s get you some cereal.”

Emeline quietly worked her way through half that bowl while I was whipping the bread’s glaze together. Her curiosity finally got the best of her and she crept into the kitchen to see what I was doing. She grabbed my wrist as I was brushing the glaze onto the first loaf, looked up at me with wide eyes and a mischievous grin, and whispered, “I twy?”

I smiled and handed her the brush. She did the best any two-year-old could. It wasn’t pretty, but it was adorable. Emeline and I finished glazing the loaves as the sun rose and poured its gorgeous orange-red beams into the kitchen. We put the loaves in the oven and quietly played in the kitchen until everyone else woke up to the smell of fresh-baked bread.

Two nights later, eighteen⁴ of us were crammed together in Robert’s bedroom, praying and singing over him as he slept. We held each other; we held him; we held our breath while his chest slowly rose and fell. Eventually, the rising and falling came at increasingly longer intervals until they stopped all together. It was completely surreal. We wept and stared at the bed where Robert’s body lay. I can’t possibly describe how strange that moment was, and I hope you never have to learn yourself. Unsure of proper mourning protocol, I gave a hug to everyone in the room, put my hand on Robert’s chest as I whispered goodbye, and made my way back to the kitchen. I pulled out the flour and yeast and set to work on another two loaves of challah.

My mind plays tricks on me. I’ve made at least another dozen loaves of challah since that night. Still, I can’t help but remember that weekend in May every time I try to bake that bread. This afternoon, I could have sworn I was back at the lodge in Burnet. My mind ran through the whole weekend again and again as I kneaded that dough. And I may have been a little too enthusiastic when I was driving my fists into it. I don’t understand it, but maybe it’s some kind of doughy catharsis that ends deliciously. Especially with a little butter or nutella.⁵

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¹ Don’t ask.

² I promise, I won’t always write about such morose topics, but I will write about things that are on my heart. And tonight, this is it. Sorry.

³ Thank God for friends on the nightwatch.

⁴ That number is a total guess. It could have been more, but certainly not less.

⁵ I hope this hasn’t been too depressing. I’m honestly thankful that the Lord allowed my brother to pass the way he did. Robert told me months before that I he had a choice, he wanted to be surrounded by the people he loved. And that’s what he got. Good for him.

You see, I’m an introvert, which is psychological jargon than means I prefer my own company over hanging out in a screaming crowd. It doesn’t mean I don’t like people; it means I’m most comfortable alone. And in my life, those solitary moments are hard to come by. The average schedule for a student at my school is so packed he needs two weeks notice to schedule a 30-minute meeting over a cup of coffee. I’ve had a millionaire businessman tell me that my schedule was too busy. So, finding an hour to sneak into my living room and enjoy some music without having to worry about interruptions or schedules or due dates is almost miraculous. But tonight, I’m making the time for it.

There are so many things I enjoy about living in the technological world we have today – cars to drive when it’s freezing cold outside, telephones to stay in touch with my family a thousand miles away, and of course, iPods to satisfy my often schizophrenic auditory appetites on demand. But I often wonder how much more peaceful life might be if we didn’t have those things. Without computers, my professors couldn’t email me new assignments on a whim. Without electricity, it wouldn’t be feasible for me to keep enough candles handy to pull an all-nighter before a big test. Without miter saws, my best friend might not have taken that huge chunk of flesh out of his thumb.

Now, I’m not some crazed environmentalist seeking the abolition of technology for a renaissance of agrarian micro-communities. I’m just noting that most of the things we expect to make our lives easier only make them more complex. And sometimes I’m just grateful for the simplicity of a dark room and a little music.

I have no profound point for this post. There is no philosophical argument here. But may I suggest that you take some time to step away from all the to-do lists and TV shows to enjoy the fact that God has given you a life with which you have the opportunity to learn the simple beauty of rest?

– Selah.

]]> http://www.joefuel.com/2011/02/the-simple-beauty-of-rest/feed/ 1 http://www.joefuel.com/2011/01/the-non-practicing-christian/ http://www.joefuel.com/2011/01/the-non-practicing-christian/#comments Wed, 19 Jan 2011 16:47:16 +0000 JoeFuel http://joefuel.wordpress.com/?p=42 Someone I love dearly, though rarely see eye-to-eye with, once proudly told me that she was and is a “non-practicing Christian.” Unfortunately, I’m not very quick on my feet and didn’t feel it prudent to get in a verbal jousting match with her at the time. But it’s a thought which I often ponder and I’d like to now address.

But what exactly is a non-practicing Christian? Based on how I understood the phrase at the time and what I know of Sarah’s* life, I understand a non-practicing Christian to be a person who believes in God, presumably the Judeo-Christian God, but doesn’t live one’s life according to all the perceived practices or actions that “fundamentalist Christians” seem so concerned with. Further defining the non-practicing Christian by what I know of Sarah’s life,** a non-practicing Christian appears to be a person who even attends church on all the major holidays, but is rarely, if ever, concerned with Jesus Christ or Christianity for the rest of the year. In short, I define the non-practicing Christian as someone for whom Christianity has been reduced to a set of clever, heart-warming philosophy that no longer has much relevance in the day-to-day activities of modern man; someone who claims to believe in Christianity but doesn’t care to be bothered by Christian praxis.

I think it’s easiest to approach this argument by way of analogy. Is it possible for a person to be a non-practicing cyclist? For instance, if I visit a local bicycle shop twice a year, would that make me a cyclist? No. What if I visit that shop monthly or even weekly? No. Rationally, I must, at least, put my rear on a bike and pedal around to be considered a cyclist. So, we can reasonably exclude those who merely visit a bike shop, watch cycling on television, or mentally assent the merits of cycling from those we consider cyclists. But what if I rode a bike one or twice a year, would I then be able to consider myself a cyclist? No, it wouldn’t matter if I upped the ante to riding monthly or weekly, a few days on a bike does not make me a cyclist. My friend Josh is a cyclist. He lives and breathes cycling. During the spring, summer, and fall, he’s on his bike at least six days a week. Not for a few minutes, but for hours. During the winter, his daily schedule is defined by staying in shape to ride that bike come spring. When it’s too cold or the roads are too icy to ride, he’s running or snowshoeing or at the gym, continually keeping his body in perfect condition so he’ll be ready to ride and race in the spring. There’s no such thing as a non-practicing cyclist. A cyclist is defined not by what he believes, but what he does. Josh’s life, energy, and passion are consumed largely by and on that bicycle.

Is my analogy too simplistic? Not at all. Jesus said twice in John 14 that those who love Him would keep His commandments. By Christ’s own definition, his followers would be defined by action.

And what commandments? Well, in Mark 12, someone asked Jesus what the greatest commandment was and He replied, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.”

I could pull together a whole slew of passages in the Bible to reinforce my case, but I don’t really need to. Jesus said the greatest commandment was focused on who we love and how we love Him. There is no such thing as a non-practicing Christian, just as there is no such thing as a non-practicing cyclist, because to Jesus, loving Him was intrinsically connected with action. Simple belief or mental assent to the philosophies of Jesus isn’t enough. At best, that can only be loving the Lord with all my mind. But what about the heart? What about the soul? What about loving the Lord with all your strength? Strength, in particular, connotes action, because clearly Jesus wasn’t talking about loving Him while I’m at the gym.

The non-practicing Christian is a myth. It doesn’t exist. And I don’t really mind if a person doesn’t want to practice Christianity. I just prefer they not delude themselves into thinking they can consider themselves a Christian without allowing it to be their daily focus, passion, and primary motivation for everything they do. Those that love Him will keep His commandments. Period. That’s wasn’t negotiable to Jesus and it shouldn’t be to us.

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* Obviously, I’ve changed her name. I have not been given her permission to publicize her beliefs. So I’m trying to respect that.

** Thank you, Facebook. Where else would I be able to learn about a person’s every whim ad nauseam?

I’m not a big fan of baseball. Honestly, I’m not much of sports fan at all. It’s not lucky. It’s not faded because I’ve had it for years. No, it came factory faded because sweet, vintage ball caps just look cooler. There’s no normal reason that this hat should be special to me, except that it belonged to my brother.

Robert was [is?] three years older than me, and he rarely let me forget it. All my life, he was there, playing the older brother. He loved to correct me, instruct me, and generally prove his utter superiority over me, the way older siblings do. Growing up, we were often at odds with each other; Robert had to assert his God-given right to enforce justice and I simply couldn’t abstain from wielding my greatest genetic predisposition – my mother’s stubbornness. Robert and I were as different as two brothers can be. He was the strong, athletic, creative genius and consummate extrovert; I was the shy, quiet, very non-athletic science kid and a total introvert. I could write story after story about our differences, but dear readers, please just take my word for it. Up through high school, Robert and I had a rather antagonistic relationship.

Most of that changed when Robert left home and went to college. With Robert gone, I began to realize that our family just wasn’t the same without him around. Without Robert, I was left to run all the errands and stand up against our mother’s perceived tyranny by myself. Without Robert, no one was around to tell Jimmy (my younger brother) and I which TV shows to watch or how stupid we looked in our school uniforms. Without Robert, life was just different, and not in ways that brought me any sort of joy. By the time he came home for Thanksgiving, I’d had the time to realize that I really missed him. And that, by my estimation, was the beginning of our friendship.

Two years later, I ended up at the same college that Robert and his wife Aimee were attending and there our friendship began in earnest. I spent a lot of time with Robert and Aimee during my first two years at the illustrious New Mexico State University. By the time the couple graduated and moved back home to find gainful employment, they were two of my closest friends. But after that, my relationship with Robert began to drift apart. Later, Robert ended up in Austin working for an advertising agency, being a husband to Aimee and a father to two gorgeous little girls, and hanging out with Jimmy and his wife Megan. I ended up at a small theological school in Kansas City. The physical distance wasn’t the only thing that had tainted our friendship, but that’s not really the point. It is sufficient to say there was a strain in our relationship.

Robert was diagnosed with testicular cancer about two years ago and spent the next 15 months fighting for his life. Part of that struggle involved traveling to Indianapolis for a two-month stint at the IUPUI hospital for high-dose chemotherapy. When Robert left for Indy, his then very pregnant wife wasn’t able to travel with him, so I dropped out of school for a semester to drive halfway across the country with my brother and served him as best I could. That mostly entailed doing Robert’s laundry, supplying him with loads of tea, and getting his film developed. But before the chemo chaos started, Robert and I had some time to kill in the area. We decided it’d be fun to catch a Cubs game in Chicago with Aimee’s brother Josh.

Somehow, we ended up in a hat shop and each picked out a faux-vintage Cubs hat. I picked a cap with a little bear cub in a red C, but Robert told me he’d had his eye on it. I knew that Robert had a dread fear of buying a matching hat, so I offered to pick another. But he insisted that I keep it and made up some tripe about it looking better on me. Eventually, he settled with this hat with the green C.

The next day, we went to Chicago to watch the Cubs play the Phillies. I was my first major league game and though the Cubs lost, it was amazing. The day was perfect – sunny but not oppressively warm. The seats gave us a spectacular view of the ballpark. The company – Josh, Ben, and Robert – was wonderful. Robert, ever the photographer, must have taken a million pictures. We had a great time.

Eight months ago, Robert passed away. He fought hard but the cancer just overpowered him. And last week, Aimee gave me this hat. I doubt she knew that I’d been there when he bought it, but I did. Now it sit on my bookshelf, reminding me of the two months that I was able to spend with my brother and serve him. I couldn’t fight the cancer for him, but I got really good at folding his clothes. And in those two months, something changed. We never talked about our faded friendship, never aired our grievances and discovered all our problems, but something changed and that friendship was restored.

When Robert left for college, I discovered how precious he was to me. But the pain I felt then cannot begin to compare with the pain I feel now. With Robert gone, our family isn’t the same. But he won’t be coming home for the holidays. Though his number is still saved on my phone, he won’t be calling to make sure I’m living my life according to his ever-sagacious standards. There is immense comfort in knowing that, as Christians, I will see him again one day, but it does not change the fact that he’s not here now. And this Cubs hat sits as a reminder of the brother I miss so very much.

It’s difficult to explain the pain one suffers with the loss of a loved one. In my experience, it differs based on the relationship. When my mom passed away, it felt like the ground had disappeared, like the earth had dropped a million miles from my feet. But with Robert, it feels like I’ve lost a limb, like someone cut off my right arm. I can’t get used to that feeling. I think of Robert and I’m confronted with his absence, like reaching for the newspaper and finding you have no hand with which to grasp it at all.

I miss Robert. He was witty, kind, and loving, which I am so often not. If it weren’t for his encouragement, I would have never started writing at all. If you asked, I could tell you a thousand stories about him, but just looking at this Cubs hat reminds me of the friend I’d found in him. Forgive me if I start to cry.

My brothers and I have made a practice of being mischievous whenever we get the opportunity. It started the way things always do for teenage boys – toilet-papering a classmate’s house, pranking friends from our youth group, sneaking onto our neighbor’s garage roof to dive into our little, backyard pool. My mom always said that she was waiting for my dad to grow up. As long as we weren’t committing a felony or putting someone in grave danger, Dad never did much to stop us. In fact, he often joined us in diving off that garage roof. Mom couldn’t have been surprised when we added “urban exploration” to our miscreant activities on Thanksgiving of 2006.

My younger brother, Jimmy, was coming home for the holiday from his first semester at U.T. Austin. Mom wanted to be sure that she would spend some quality time with her sons. She managed to convince the owner of some small restaurant to reserve a table for our family on the patio overlooking El Paso’s Thanksgiving parade for breakfast. I’m sure she envisioned a new Thanksgiving tradition.

Of course, parking was a nightmare that morning and my older brother Robert and I ended up having to park half a mile away from the restaurant. Walking down the street to join our family, Robert and I spotted the abandoned mansion that used to belong to a politician named Albert Fall. It was easy to spot a few ways into the monstrous house and Robert, the photographer, and I, the miscreant and breaking-and-entering extraordinaire, started talking about slipping into the house after the parade to explore and take a few pictures. We continued the discussion over breakfast and by the time we cleaned our plates, it was settled. The Feuille boys would be up to no good – Robert, Jimmy, Dad, and myself. Thus, a favorite mischievous pastime was born.

As we found more opportunities for urban exploration, we developed a system. Robert and Jimmy are both terrific photographers. I happen to be a decent scout and a terrific pack-mule for camera equipment. Robert and Jim posted some of their shots online and Robert ended up finding e-friends who happened to also enjoy urbex photo projects. However, there is no urbex e-friend who quite compares with Noel Kerns. The man is humble, honest, intelligent, and witty. He does amazing things with a camera, strobes, flashlights, and a few gels. But I’m relatively certain that he’s also slightly insane. He’s nearly obsessive about scouting and documenting urbex locations. Noel will walk into places at night that most mortals wouldn’t dare enter during the day, and he does it alone.

When Robert and I were driving from Austin, Texas to Indiana at the beginning of August, we decided to stop in Dallas and meet up with Noel for a night of mischief-making. Noel took us to a small town about an hour outside of Dallas called Mineral Springs. We drove by two points of interest before grabbing a bit to eat – an abandoned, 30-plus-story hotel and an abandoned military hospital turned junkyard.

As the sun was setting, we headed to the hotel. Noel, whom I had just met, quickly put me to work scouting the building for any possible entries. Honestly, that place creeped me out, but I traipsed around with all the courage I could muster. I’d hate for Noel to think me a coward. We ended up searching the entire perimeter of the building. I even climbed a wall and nearly dropped more than ten feet through a collapsed roof. Yet, we could not find a way in.

So, we headed over to the hospital. It may be impossible to describe how eerie the whole scene was. The sun had set. There were plenty of clouds in the sky. The stars weren’t exactly. And the moon gave enough light to make navigating the fences and high grass possible. There were maybe three working street lights shedding light at random spots around the huge complex. Everything was dreadfully silent, save for the crickets and the pounding of our feet on the lawn. Noel had been there before, but that didn’t make me feel any more safe.

We explored the hospital for a few hours. The first floor was filled with cobwebs and moths, which made it difficult to use the headlamp I was wearing. Every time I turned it on, I was immediately smacked in the face by a few months. The dead cats scattered around the hospital didn’t add much to the charm either. Still, we pressed in.

The first floor had most recently been the site of some sort of flea market. Every room and hallway was filled with bizarrely outdated garbage – Halloween costumes, ancient desktop computers, boxes of stage lights, and typewriters that secretaries would have killed for in the 70s. The second and third floors were nearly identical, with pitch black operating rooms, copious graffiti, supply cabinets, and patient’s quarters. We stopped to take a few pictures of a feline carcass and an odd set of filing cabinets. All the while, I stood around holding strobes and waiting for some hobo to creep up behind me in the darkness and drag me to my doom.

We made our way to the fifth floor, which had furnaces, air-conditioners, and oxygen pumps, and the roof, complete with a view of the whole complex and rain-damaged spots you’d likely drop through if you put any weight on them. Noel took us down to the basement, where we got to quickly glance around the morgue and a room that have been a chemist’s lab. We finally exited the building into a communal graveyard for junked cars, boats, trailers, and furniture. Noel began to set up for a shot of an old T-bird when I looked over to my right and saw a police car. Apparently, the police spotted Noel’s SUV and wanted to take a closer look. We packed up the equipment and prepared for a little excitement. We jumped for cover as the spotlights turned from the car to the junkyard. I hid behind a bed frame and a small tree as the police car drove slowly down the street behind us.

Knowing they were circling the block, Noel, Robert, and I stood up and started moving towards the car. The cops had driven faster than we expected and we dove for cover among some bushes again. I was closest to the car, watching in horror as the spotlight scanned the long, empty lawn on the other side of the bush. The light came inches away from my feet and never in my life did I so wish I owned some camouflage clothing. I felt like we were hiding for ages, but it couldn’t have been more than a minute or two. The car suddenly made a U-turn and sped away. We jumped up and ran full-tilt across the empty lawn, hopped a fence, tossed the gear into the car, and hit the road.

In retrospect, we should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. A few blocks later, we were followed by not one, but two police cars, both flashing their lights overhead. The officer swaggered up to Noel’s window and less-than-politely inquired about our most recent activities. We told the truth – we were taking pictures and taking a look around. He demanded to see our I.D.’s and proof that we were actually taking pictures. Noel obliged by opening the back of his SUV and showed him the cameras.

Moment’s later, the officer returned, semi-satisfied with our explanation and otherwise clean criminal records. He gave us an utterly absurd yarn about the fact that the hospital is actually private property and how the owner now resides in a renovated portion of the hospital with a large dog and a shotgun, ready to defend his property against trespassers. He also informed us of the hotel and recommended that we poke around there. We chose not to tell him that we’d already been there.

Noel drove back to the highway and pulled over a pair of vintage gas pumps for Robert to take a few shots and to check the equipment. Afterwards, we decided to head back to Dallas. Once we parted from Noel, Robert and I drove down the interstate to find a cheap motel for the night and Robert recounted his first night-shoot with Noel, which may forever be the most disturbing story I have ever heard.