Dirt and Eyes

This time of year, mowing can be pretty miserable.

Contrary to popular belief, it actually does get really dry here in the Evergreen State in the summer, and just as soon as the soil dries out and the moles push it on top of the lawn in nice big shovel fulls, mowing can be like creating my very own dust storm. It's so bad I have to stop sometimes and let the dust clear. It gets in my eyes, nose, mouth, ears, and well pretty much all over me, but it especially hurts in my eyes. And that's even while wearing a dust mask and safety shades. My new saying between wiping my eyes and coughing is "Dust finds a way."

Interestingly, though, I have started to realize that there is a Biblical picture in this mess. My struggles remind me of one of my favorite Jesus stories in John 9, where Jesus stoops down, spits in some dirt, and applies the muddy remedy to a blind man's eyes. I' always get a huge grin out of this story, and it is my guess that John was grinning too as he wrote the whole account down. The rest of the story gets even more humorous after the blind man washes the mud out of his eyes and is healed; his exchange with the disbelieving and spiritually blind pharisees is simply classic. This newly-healed blind dude had so much cheek! The Pharisees didn't find his sarcasm all that funny, but man, I would have loved to have been there to give that bro a fist bump.

The grins aside, I love the practical application here for me! Could it be that Jesus lovingly puts a little dirt in my eyes by way of healing my spiritual blindness? It sounds kind of strange, even borderline heretical, but I believe it's true!

Now to be clear, I don't mean "evil" by dirt. But I do mean "trials," and it's very clear that Jesus lovingly puts some trials in our lives so that we can learn and grow from them. The dirt hurts in the moment, but when I run to the life-giving water to be washed, I come up healed and able to see spiritual things more clearly! That's been true so many times in my life. Every time I go through a trial, it makes me run to Jesus, and I find cleansing and healing! I come out of it with more spiritual wisdom and maturity then I ever find in the good times.

Now, to switch gears a little bit, there is very clearly some "evil" dirt we gotta get out of our eyes too. This isn't the stuff Jesus puts on us, but the stuff we foolishly bring on ourselves. It's pictured in Mathew 7 as both a log in a hypocrite's eye and a speck in another poor soul's peeper. A big takeaway from the parable? Get the stuff out of your eye! And when you've done that and can see clearly, help your brother clean his eyeballs as well. Here too the solution to getting clean is running to the pool of life-giving water, Jesus, to wash. As John 1:9 puts it, If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

The final point is, the fact that we only see clearly when we get the log out of our eye should give us pause to try and keep dirt out of our eyes in the first place. When we don't see clearly, bad things happen both physically and spiritually, amen? I confess I have hit a rock or twenty while mowing because I can't see clearly. And a nest of wild baby rabbits. Yes, it's true. So sad. :(

This guarding of our eyes against dirt is especially relevant for us young men, I think, and our battle for sexual purity. We need to be like Job and make a covenant with our eyes not to lust after any young woman. Of course, making a covenant is one thing; keeping it is the rub! Even worse, it so often feels like our culture is a great big dust storm that we are walking into with our eyes wide open. But keep renewing your mind, men! Keep being transformed rather than conformed!

I specifically exhort you, young men, because I can empathize with you and truly feel our struggle, but it is, of course, important for everyone--male and female, young and old--to keep our eyes clear! The lust of the eyes is one of the "big three" things the world pulls us into, but if we are Children of God, our love for God is our motivation now. (1 John 2:15-16) So friends, I really want to leave you with this encouragement: you have been redeemed, so shine brightly for Christ by keeping clear eyes!

The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!

Mathew 6:22-23

New Short Story: What Really Matters

To the new believers who rekindle my own ember of faith by their enthusiasm for the Lord and His Kingdom. I love being around your joy.

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Her white-blonde hair catches the bright gymnasium light as she spins, like the first glimpse of a winter sunrise. Her blue eyes are half-closed and dreamy toward the brilliant chaos of the dance around her, but when she completes her spin and faces me, her eyes focus on mine without reserve and my already bumbling attempt at dancing gets even worse. I know if someone were to take my pulse, my heart would be racing. Racing with powerful emotions. Racing with longing . . . and even a little hope. 

Her name is Beth, Beth Copeland. Every male in Valley View Christian High, freshman to senior, knows her name. She’s that one girl blessed with such amazing beauty as to be the automatic dream of the entire school, or at least most of it. Boys want to date her. Girls want to look like her. Teachers hope they might be featured in a magazine someday under the headline, “New Face of America Accredits Success to High School Teacher.”

And she is actually dancing with me. 

I didn’t think she was in my league, of course. I am a lowly sophomore who barely made the football team earlier this school year. I weigh exactly 137 pounds, though that is a six-pound improvement from the start of the year. I am average in just about every way: height, IQ, abilities, you name it. I’ve never been in the limelight for being good or bad, unless you count a couple of school plays (never a lead) or my baptism (only half my church family cared to see it). 

All that changed, though, when I caught a pass from Dillon Seewald on the last play of the season and scampered into our rival’s end zone with the winning touchdown. Suddenly I was a hero, someone the team wanted to hoist up and carry on their shoulders. My name became known by more than a handful of people at my school; it became a household name, really. Everyone heard about me, in this town and the next. A student Youtube video of my catch has even gone semi-viral, with all of 3,873 views last I checked. That day became the best one of my life, and in my mind’s eye that football game became simply The Game, capitalized.

I thought I had lived my fifteen minutes of fame to the fullest, and just a couple of minutes ago, you would have found me where you’d find any average, insecure sophomore at a winter ball: hanging out at the punch bowl with other sophomore and freshman boys while glancing over nervously at girls. But then Beth had walked up.

“Hi,” she had said.

“Hi,” a couple of the boys had replied. But then I realized she was talking to me.

“Beth,” I nearly choked on my punch. “Hi.”

“How’s it going, Kevin?”

“Good,” I nodded, but all the while I was wondering how Beth knew my name. I had never spoken to her before, of course. I wondered if she had been at The Game. Or maybe she’d seen the YouTube video. I realized I was still nodding and stopped abruptly.

“How are you?” I asked.

“I’m doing fine.” She shrugged. “You know, If I didn’t know better, I would think you guys thought the winter ball was all about drinking punch.”

“I, uh, haven’t really learned how,” I confessed. “How to dance, I mean.”

“It’s easy,” Beth said. “Look, you can’t be worse than Jeff.” she nodded at a known class clown dancing with uncoordinated abandon. His ill-fitting black jeans and clunky sneakers only added to his look.

I shrugged.

“Want some punch?” one of the other boys suggested. His voice sounded kind of like a mouse learning how to talk.  

“No, thank you. Too much sugar.”

“Oh, ha ha,” the boy said. Another added that he was on his sixth cup and didn’t care.

There was an awkward pause.

“Well, I guess I will go wait around for a guy to ask me to dance,” Beth said. “It’s funny how they still want guys to ask girls to dance.” She looked at me.

“Do you want to?”

“Want to what?”

“Dance,” I gulped. “You know, with me.”

And here we are. I part hands with Beth and twirl with the girl on my left. Then I am facing Beth again. We step close, then apart, then close again and twirl. I have to let go of her hands again at that point in the dance, but I don’t want to. Then the music fades out, and the dance is over, wayyy too quickly. I never thought minutes could pass like seconds.

Beth curtsies and claps, and I bow awkwardly. One of my hands makes it behind my back like I’ve seen in movies, but the other one just kind of hangs there. I join in the applause for the dance to cover up my embarrassment.

Beth steps to my side and slips a hand in my elbow as the dance caller instructs, “Lead your partner off the dance floor.”

“Do you want water?” I ask.

“Yes, I’m parched.” She says. She smiles, and I am glad I didn’t make a joke about punch.

I lead her toward a couple of orange Gatorade tubs labeled “water,” steering clear of the sugary punch but flashing a triumphant look at the boys gathered around it. All the while I am trying to work up the courage to ask her for a second dance.

“That was fun!” I say.

“Yes, it was. And I am sure your dancing will get better with practice.” She says it in such an offhand manner that I am left scrambling to consider it a compliment.

“Practice makes perfect,” I joke weakly.

“Well, better at least,” Beth replies lightly.

I start, stop, and hesitate. “Would you—”

“Hi Beth!”

We both turn at the familiar voice. “Oh hi, Dillon!” Beth replies, and she says it with more life in her voice than she ever had to me.

Dillon is a total stud in his perfectly fitted vest. Every inch of his 6’2” frame stands out, and his muscles ripple nicely under the rolled-back sleeves of his red dress shirt. His hair is combed up and back perfectly, and he is smart enough not to try the senior beard, so his face looks well kempt. He is a good guy on the inside, too, a picture-perfect high school quarterback.

“Looks like you were having a time of it out there,” Dillon says. I notice he omitted the word “good.”

 Beth giggles. “Well,” she says giddily, “Kevin is better running with a football in his hands.”

She and Dillon laugh at the joke. I don’t find it that funny. At all.

“Come on, Kev, lighten up, man!” Dillon holds up his balled hand for a fist bump, but he holds it high enough to where I have to reach up. A fleeting fantasy crosses my mind of fist bumping his square jaw instead, but I laugh lamely and reach up for his fist with mine.

“Can I please have the next dance with you?” Dillon asks Beth.

“Sure,” Beth replies. And just like that, she has left my side and linked arms with Dillon.

“Don’t you still want water?” I say.

Beth shrugs dismissively. “No, I’m fine.”

“It’s okay, we can grab water before the next dance,” Dillon says kindly, and he guides her off toward the water.

I stand in the middle of the dance floor for a minute, heart sinking. I turn on my heels and walk back to the punch bowl. The split halves of my heart seem to bounce in each shoe. But who was I to think I’d ever have a shot with the prettiest girl in the school, anyway? Sure, I had my moment of fame during The Game, but now I realize that Dillon was in that game too. He was the one that drew off the defense toward him, buying time for the little sophomore no one thought to guard to get out into open field. He even faked to our 6’5” tight end for good measure before he threw it to me. I was a nobody that Dillon had made a somebody by his greatness.

“Dude, harsh,” one of the freshmen says to me. He is outweighed, though, by the jealous derision of the other boys as they grind me back down to where I belong with biting half-jokes and sarcasm.  I ignore them, fill a cup with punch, and wander away. I think about crossing the dance floor to the cluster of chattering girls we boys  had jokingly named the “magpies,” but my heart is just not in it. I feel a need to talk to someone. Someone who can help me out of my budding identity crisis. Someone who will truly listen. Someone adult, even.

I look around the chairs laid out for the parents of the students attending the dance. Very few parents have come, and I don’t know any of them. I don’t even know some of my friend’s parents, come to think of it. One older man catches my eye, though. He looks rough. His skin is weathered and three days’ worth of gray stubble isn’t enough to cover deep wrinkles and even a scar that runs across his left check. He wears a flannel and a pair of brown Carhartt’s that have small tears in the legs. My first thought is a cry for school security, but yet, the man’s countenance is inviting and kind—friendly even. It piques my interest, even disarms me, and I instinctively walk toward him. I am not completely sure why in the moment. Maybe I think it wil cheer me up to talk to someone who has had a rougher go at life than me.

There are two seats open next to the man. I don’t want to sit next to him, but sitting a seat away from him would put me next to Dorothy Dreyer. She is our PE teacher, but ironically, she’s one of those people who kind of takes up more than one chair. I sit in-between the two seats, hovering awkwardly above the crack. I glance once at the man, then look away. We stare out at the dance floor.

 

“Another dance is starting soon.”

I can tell in my peripheral vision that the man is trying to make eye contact with me. “I . . . it’s just not my night,” I mutter.

“Not mine either. The one night I have visitation with my daughter, it’s the school ball.”

“You could dance with her.”

“She’d be embarrassed.”

That is kind of what I am inwardly thinking. “Who is she?” I ask after a moment.

The man inclines his head in the direction I have studiously been avoiding looking toward. “The tall, slender girl there, with the blonde hair and turquoise dress? That’s my daughter. Beth is her name.”

Now I look the man in the eye.  “Wow,” is all I can manage.

The corners of the man’s eyes wrinkle even more as he smiles. “Don’t look so surprised, buddy. As you can tell, she takes after her mother.” the man adds “in a lot of ways” under his breath, but I am too busy wondering if talking to Beth’s dad will boost my chances with her to notice. Probably not, since I never knew Beth’s dad was even a part of her life. I don’t figure Beth is too proud of him.

“She’s dancing with the school quarterback,” I say, trying to sound nonchalant.

“Yeah, I see that. And she was dancing with Valleyview’s hero a minute ago.”

I smirk ruefully. “You can see why it’s not my night.”

“Yeah, I know why you’d feel that way. I’ve had a lot of those nights,” Beth’s dad says, but then he smiles. “They’re not so bad anymore, though.”

“Why not?”

“Well, do you know Jesus?”

“Um, yeah.”

“He saved me. He saved me from my selfish living.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with dancing,” I mutter.

“Everything, buddy, everything,” Beth’s dad replies. “Take me. Before Christ, I pursued girls because I thought they would fulfill me. I pursued sports because I thought it would give me meaning. I made money because I thought that’s what people did to satisfy their wants. When my dreams failed, I felt empty, meaningless, and unsatisfied. When I did catch my dreams, I was happy for a while, but still unsatisfied.”

I look at Beth. “Like, how?”

“Because everything in the world is broken, I guess. None of it is complete. Even if you get it, it still leaves you wanting.”

“Maybe you just never completely had your dream.”

Beth’s dad looks at me sharply. A flash of something—is it hurt or anger?—shows in his eyes, but then he softens. “That’s not true. I had Beth’s mom, once. I had a great job. I was a successful salesman; I had money.  And then we were blessed with Beth, my starlight.”

The conversation has taken an abruptly personal turn so fast, that I grow uncomfortable with it. Curiosity overrules me, though, and the questions keep coming out my mouth before my better judgement stops them. “What happened?”

“I was left wanting.”

“They left you?”

“I left them first, in my heart, and I was too pathetic to do anything about it. My wife filed for divorce, and she won custody. She took my starlight with her. Jesus was nudging me all the while, trying to show me that I was building a house upon the sand, but the rains came before I realized it.”

“That’s rough,” I say after a bit.

Beth’s dad nods sadly. “It was for years, and for awhile I didn’t want anything to do with my family ever again. I picked up some bad habits, drinking and fighting primary among them. That’s how I got this scar.” He fingers the scar on his cheek. “All my selfish dreams ended in scars, really.”

“But why were they selfish? I mean, can’t our dreams be good?” I ask.

“Well, I used to think that dreams were kind of amoral, you know? But now I believe that if Jesus isn’t in our life, our dreams can’t be selfless or good, because we’ve lost sight of what really matters.”

“Which is . . .” my voice fades into a question mark.

“Building God’s kingdom, glorifying Him through it. Can’t you see it? Our own little kingdoms of fame, wealth, possessions, relationships, and stuff just kind of die with us.”

“Yeah, I guess,” I say.

“You don’t sound very convinced.” The man is still smiling.

“I just don’t see how I can stop dreaming. Like, I don’t want to give up.”

“Oh don’t get me wrong, I still have dreams. But they’re different now, you know? It’s hard to explain . . . I guess the way I’d put it is that my dreams no longer center on what I can do for me, but on what I can do for God.”

The music fades, and a dance ends. I stir restlessly. I hadn’t really set out to hear the life story of a total stranger, and somehow his words aren’t comforting. Or at least, they’re not what I want to hear, even though I had asked all the questions. I get to my feet. “Well, I should probably get back to the dance.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get to talking so much.”

“It’s all good,” I say, even as I start walking away. “Goodbye.”

“Goodbye, buddy, take care.”

I walk into the men’s bathroom. I check myself in the mirror. A tuft of my hair is struggling to stand at attention against a heavy coating of hair gel, and I do my best to smooth it down by wetting my palm and pressing it to my head. My average face seems to tilt closer to the ugly side of things under the harsh bathroom lights. I pretend to be washing my hands when another boy comes by, but as soon as he’s in a stall, I stare at myself some more. I stare into my own eyes, wondering about myself, wondering about my dreams.

“Do they really matter?” I whisper. “Do I really matter?”

Staring at my own ordinary self, the odds don’t seem to be in my favor.

I imagine a scar running across my cheek. I shudder, because in the mirror it looks real. My fingers instinctively press my cheek, feeling for the scar tissue. There is none, of course. My skin is smooth, like a baby, really. I don’t even have stubble yet. Your whole life is still ahead of you, I think to myself.

I turn from the mirror with a sigh and wander back out into the gym. Another dance has started already to a lively party song, but I filter lifelessly through the glitz and lights and dancing teens. I hit the door out of the gym, and it swings open to let in a breath of fresh night air. The song and noise of the dance fades and then cuts off abruptly as the door closes behind me, and I am alone in the dark.

I look up.

The moon is hidden behind a cloud, but the cloud’s edges glow a brilliant silver. The sky is a dusky bluish-black, perforated by the twinkling light of a sprawl of stars. I remember a recent science lesson on the stars, how they hurtle along in perfect unity with their neighbors in one huge, awe-inspiring dance. I’m struck by how immense and beautiful it all is, and really, how tiny I am.

“I’m nothing,” I whisper.

It’s freeing, now that I have actually said it. It puts my own petty kingdom of self-worth into perspective. I committed myself to Christ, to the one who created everything, but I haven’t really been living for His glory, especially after The Game. The pursuit has left me empty and sick. Sick of trying to impress, only to be rejected. Sick of chasing, but never really obtaining. Soul sick, I think that is the name for it.

“Can you heal me?” I whisper.

I listen for a voice, either booming or still and small, but I don’t hear anything coming down from above. I guess I never really expect God to speak back to me anyway. But it still feels good to talk to Him again. It’s been so long.

“God, I’m back.”

It’s really the only thing I can think to say, but a thought sparks in my mind at the same moment. It’s about a verse I had read awhile—well really quite awhile—ago, something Jesus had said. I couldn’t quote it exactly, but I know Jesus had said for people to come to Him, and He would give them rest for their souls. Rest. That sounds good.

Like a rush I remember other words of scripture; I remember more about God. Christians are dearly beloved children of God. He will work all things together for good to those who love him, to those who are called according to His purposes. He is faithful, even when we are faithless. It’s like the rush or remembrance fans a smoldering ember deep inside me, an ember of faith that has been slowly burning out. Passion rises inside me, the same passion I felt when I was baptized. It’s passion to break away from an empty life and live differently. It’s passion to serve the One who gave Hs life for me so that I might truly live. It strikes me that this is probably what makes Beth’s dad so eager to share about Jesus in his life. There’s purpose in this passion.

“It’s true, this is what really matters.” My thoughts spill out my mouth. “I’m nothing, but I’m not worthless. I’ve been redeemed by a great price for a great purpose.” I smile, grin even. “Thank you, Lord, thank you!” I whisper earnestly.

And then, almost spontaneously, a line from the Lord’s prayer springs from my mouth, and I have to repeat it again, slower, to catch what I mean, to really pray it as a heartfelt prayer.

“Your Kingdom come,” I pray. “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

In the Way

We've all been told we're "in the way" before. Whether standing in the hall, perusing a shopping isle, or stuck in traffic, we've all experienced a polite "excuse me", a less friendly exclamation of annoyance, or a blaring horn that's let us know definitively: "You are in the way."

That phrase has really struck me recently, but for a different reason thanks to John 14:6: Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through me." I've realized I am in the Way. In the truest sense of the term, I am always in the Way, because of my relationship with Jesus.

The awesome thing is, you are too if you've accepted Jesus as Lord. You've rejected the broad way of the world that leads to destruction and embarked down the narrow way that is life in Jesus. You've followed our Lord's advice to, "Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it." (Mathew 7:13-14)

How does walking on this new, narrow path work itself out practically in real life? It is interesting in that it's not as if our new path as Christians is in a whole new world (we are not transported to Narnia like the Pevensies, unfortunately), but here in the nitty gritty of the same world where we once explored the wide path. We are in the world; we are just no longer of it. And to make matters more confusing, in this world there are crossroads where the wide and narrow ways intersect.

Yep, let that sink in.

These crossroads are explained in Jeremiah 6:16:

This is what the Lord says: Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient path, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. But you said, 'We will not walk in it.'

It's natural for all of us to ask where each potential path leads when we come to a crossroad, both physically and spiritually.. I praise God that if you're a Christian, you've asked where the good way is, you've walked in that ancient path, and you've found rest for your soul. Moreover, it's our job as Christians to answer those questions being asked at the crossroad. We should be the ones saying, "Here, over here!! This is the path that leads to life!" Unfortunately, clearly there are many who will reply adamantly, "We will not walk in it!"

As Christians, what should our relationship be with these "We Will Not's"? Here is where the explanation becomes a tongue twister. You see, if we are in the Way, than we will be in the way of those people who have rejected the good way. As Proverbs 24:11-12 says:

Deliver those who are drawn toward death, And hold back those stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, “Surely we did not know this,” Does not He who weighs the hearts consider it? He who keeps your soul, does He not know it? And will He not render to each man according to his deeds?

It is our calling as Christians to stand in the gap at the crossroad, to link arms and try and stop those stumbling toward the road sign marked "Broad Way", because we know a more accurate sign would read "Destination: Destruction." That's why Christ is a stumbling block to those who won't believe (1 Peter 2:6-8), and that's why it is our responsibility to preach this stumbling block (1 Corinthians 1:23). It's not that we are somehow clinically sadistic, but that we want to save the lost around us from a path that dead ends--and by dead end, I mean a literal dead end. "There is a way which seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death." (Proverbs 14:12) 

A practical example of this "Standing in the gap" is our public stand at a physical crossroads in front of Planned Parenthood, where we pray to end abortion. We are a terrible stumbling block and "in the way" of a lot of people who don't want even a reminder of the ancient path or the good way, but if we save but one life spiritually or physically, it will be well worth the cries of anger and rage from the "We Will Not's." Even if we don't ever save a life, it is still our calling to try!  And may we all be faithful to that calling.

Lastly, we are also called to bring back those who wander from the narrow path: 

My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins. (James 5:19-20)

Even those who start down the narrow path can wander back to the world, and that's why it is so important that we make disciples, and not just converts. To be a Christian is to be in the Way, and to be in the Way is to be in the way of those who would wander straight into hell. So, that leaves me with one question. 

Will you be in the Way with me? 

Beating the Hidden Giant of Pornography

Godly men, have you experienced this odd disconnect in our Christian circles like I have? We are willing to admit we struggle with keeping Jesus's perfect standard in Mathew 5:27-28 that to even look upon a woman with lust is to commit adultery in our hearts. It's socially acceptable (but no less wrong) to admit that we struggle when an immodestly dressed woman walks past us at the fair, in the mall, etc. However, when we move this same sin of lust to an online avenue, it becomes an issue that no one wants to admit to or address. It becomes the giant elephant in the room among men's Bible studies. We know pornography is a huge problem, but it is an awkward, taboo subject that is so often left untouched.

This is true for me personally. I don't like to talk about this any more than you probably do. It's awkward. It's putrid and repulsive. It's something I wish we didn't even have to struggle with. I know this is why the disconnect exists between how big an issue pornography is and how quiet our response is. I can understand this, but at the same time, not talking about porn because it is an awkward subject, I now realize, is a lame excuse. It's against my calling as a Christian, even, to not speak out.  As it says in Ephesians 5:4,8-14:

But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints . . . For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth), finding out what is acceptable to the Lord. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret. But all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light, for whatever makes manifest is light. Therefore He says:

“Awake, you who sleep,

Arise from the dead,

And Christ will give you light.”

  I don't think there can be a clearer call to speak out boldly against pornography than this. Lord forgive me for being too hesitant to speak out sooner! Men, It's undeniable that pornography shouldn't even be named among us. It truly is shameful even to speak of this thing done in secret . . . we should have no fellowship with it.

Since I have said that clearly, I want to say, humbly, that this is not an area I have been perfect in. I have had struggles as early as age 13 with purity online, and I have stumbled more than a few times. My failures have made me realize that I can't keep pure on my own. It is honestly an issue I believe no man can conquer on his own. The man after God's own heart, David, stumbled terribly. Who am I to think that I am better or more capable than him?

This realization has gradually led me to some firmly held ideas about how to beat this hidden giant of porn that I want to share with you. First off, we need to link arms with fellow brothers and fight this giant together. Secondly, we need to put every hindrance possible between us and pornography. Lastly and most importantly, our desire and passion for Christ needs to outweigh our sinful passions toward lust. I know these ideas sound simple, but I believe it's faithfully living them out that can bring victory—and by victory, I mean total and complete freedom from temptation online! I am absolutely convinced this hope is ours, men; I have experienced a taste of it myself!

My whole desire in this post is to urge men to take pornography seriously, and to explore together these ideas for beating it. My hope is that by breaking the ice about this awkward topic through this post, conversations among men will be started that will lead to both increased awareness and renewed resolve to beat this giant back out of the gates of our churches, families, and hearts.

It all starts, I believe, by throwing off this whole idea of a lone ranger approach to our sexual purity. If you look at every account of a man stumbling into sexual sin in the Bible, he did so because he was alone. The young man walked by the harlot's house alone in Proverbs 7. David was alone on that rooftop when he saw Bathsheba bathing. The most despicable, extreme example of sexual sin is found in 2 Samuel 13 when Amnon sent out everyone from his presence so he could be alone with Tamar. Men, it is so clear: terrible things happen when we are alone.

A huge strategy for sexual purity, then, is to extremely limit what is called our "private lives". Be around people who know you. Don't find yourself alone, especially with time to kill, as much as possible. There will be times, of course, where it is impossible not to be alone, but this doesn't mean you can't still be accountable with how you are using that time. For instance, I spend hours studying in a quite room by myself, but I spend a lot of that time screen sharing with other online students so we stay accountable and on task.

Speaking of accountability, I've also realized the great benefit of having a real live accountability partner. This is not as daunting as it sounds, I assure you! Find a dear friend and brother in Christ you can trust with your secrets and be honest about your struggles with him. You'll be shocked to find that he struggles with the same issues too and wants to be free of them like you do! Seriously, this isn't that hard if we are willing to humble ourselves and be honest. It shouldn't be weird to admit that you are a real, live functioning adult male with God-given sexual desires living in a fallen world. The trade off of having someone to help build you up and sharpen you in your battle for purity far outweighs the awkward conversations you will have to have! And not to mention, avoiding having to have those awkward conversations is a great bonus motivator to remain sexually pure.

This leads into my second thought about putting as many barriers between ourselves and porn as possible. We should take this seriously, to the point of actively inconveniencing or even handicapping ourselves if that is what is necessary to avoid lust! Sound extreme? Don't blame me! It's our Lord Jesus who says in Mathew 5:27-30:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’; but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. If your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to go into hell."

If our Lord takes lust this seriously, we should follow suit. It may mean something as extreme as not having internet at our homes or data on our phones if that is what it takes! In our day and age, that would definitely be like losing our right arm. Needless to say, we need to put as many barriers in place as possible till we stop stumbling online. An easy place to start is accountability software on all your devices and someone willing to partner with you in getting the software reports of your online activity. It may also mean no devices make it to your bed room. It may mean destroying every movie you have with a scene in it that makes you stumble. Do whatever it takes, men! I urge you. It was as if Jesus was figuratively comparing lust to gangrene. The decay and suffering it causes needs to be cut off to restore us to health! Even if that cutting off is painful and seriously debilitating, it is the only way to truly live.

Lastly but most importantly, our struggle for purity will only succeed if done for the soul purpose of glorifying God! Of this I am certain. When I try to stay pure only to prove my righteousness to man, I fail every time. How much better to be so committed to the Lord that to stumble in pornography would be heartbreaking solely because it would grieve the God who died for us! We can't fight fire with fire on this one. Battling pornography in our own flesh will lead only to failure. We need to live out our new nature as children of God, deeply committed to abiding and growing in our relationship to Him. I won't post it here, but I strongly recommend Galatians 5:16-25 as a key passage to understanding how we can deny sin as Christians. It begins and ends with walking by the Spirit!

I want to sum up this post with a simple but powerful verse. It demonstrates perfectly all the thoughts I have just shared and bundles them into one simple game plan.  May we all be faithful to find other men who call upon the Lord from a pure heart to hold each other accountable to. May we all actively flee lust no matter how much it inconveniences us. And above all else, may we be faithful to walk by the spirit and produce good fruit such as righteousness, faith, love, and peace! This hidden giant of pornography will starve itself out if it can't gorge itself on our lustful thoughts or desires. I am experiencing victory from this giant as I find more and more ways to distance myself from his reach. Will you come run with me? There is a way of escape for us where this giant can't reach. It's found in a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ! Come with me, man of God. Let's flee and starve this giant together!

Now flee from youthful lusts and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. 

2 Timothy 2:22

The Forgotten Cross

It sits there in the little balcony overlooking our hill. It should have been lighted all Christmas season long. All it asked of me was to plug it in. Its warm, yellow glow should have been cast across our home like a comfortable, familiar blanket you'd wrap around yourself to keep out the cold. Instead, the gloom of these short winter days crowd in relentlessly.

It waits for me still, but now I will come only to take it down. I'll fold down its short arms. Lower it to the ground. Store it away in the crawl space below our house to keep it safe for next year. It's my cross I made--A couple different lengths of black PVC roped with bright lights to shine the symbol of the Good News of Christ.

It's the cross I forgot about all Christmas season long.

It's true. It helped that for the first time in a while, my dad was the main Christmas light setter-upper this year. But still, I had time to haul the cross up there to our balcony . . . I just never remembered to plug it in.

I can't help but feel a similar parallel to my faith the past month. It's there--steady, never in doubt of falling. And yet, it isn't shining. It feels almost forgotten even, or at least neglected. My devotions have been almost non-existent. Men's Bible Study and Church have been like little islands of light and hope I robotically swim to, walk across, and plunge into a sea of apathy on the other side. I've let all the distractions this season offers deaden my faith.

The analogy holds: like the cross, I haven't been plugged into my power source. I haven't been consistently abiding with Christ, and the witness my life should be as a Christ follower has been very dim. In this dark, desperate world, I've slipped into a pattern of selfish distractions that has kept my light from shining. My faith is there, yes, but it hasn't been alive for others to see and benefit from.

Thank goodness, I am committed to a God who will never wander from me and loves me more than I can even fathom. Who but Jesus would stay in a relationship so one-sided? Would you, if you were barely acknowledged day in and day out? Would you love someone who hurts you day after day in so many ways through his sin?

I am so humbled by that thought alone, and it awakens my love and desire for the Lord. It's more than that, though. My Sovereign God aligned several things to strike me all at once on Sunday. The first was a timely message from one of our visiting missionaries, reminding me that every Christian life consists of peaks and valleys. The valleys aren't abnormal, but they can be escaped through praise, prayer, and consistent time in God's word.

The second was a devotion I read by Ray Comfort. I was challenged to consider how my life was showing how thankful I was for Jesus's sacrifice for me at the cross. Not much currently, I had to admit. At the bottom of the page there was a prayer to pray, thanking Jesus and committing to live in gratitude. I prayed that prayer full-heartedly, which led to a longer prayer pouring out my heart.

It was as if this sip of everlasting water showed me just how thirsty I really was. I couldn't drink fast enough.

The third hit me as I rolled into bed after midnight. A new year--an oft-realized chance for a fresh start. I committed then and there that priority 1# for the New Year was reviving my spiritual walk. No more apathy. No more spiritual dehydration. It feels so nasty when you start coming out of it, really. Like the Steven Curtis Chapman song says so fittingly: "I'm playing GameBoy standing in the middle of the Grand Canyon/ I'm eating candy sitting at a gourmet feast/ I'm wading in a puddle when I could be swimming in the ocean/ Tell me what's the deal with me/ wake up and see the glory."

So, here's my prayer for all of us in the New Year: May we take this time to recommit our lives to Jesus, that we will wake up and see His glory and live every moment for it. Let's not forget the cross. The distractions we can get wrapped up in are a pathetic, life-sucking trade-off in comparison. May we all make resolutions that will trim out these distractions and maximize our potential for Christ. He's given us each different gifts and desires to use in service of Him; let's not waste them! 

It's truly the only way to really live. 

Happy Just to Be

Happy Just to Be

To Timmy for inspiring this story. Thank you for letting me learn about life with you! (And yes, you can be annoying like Jack sometimes, but I wouldn’t trade you for the world.)

-----

I swung my 1972 Chevy Malibu into the gravel beside the road. I skidded to a stop at an awkward angle, but I didn’t really care. This would be a quick stop, and a quick turnaround. I’d be homeward bound in a few. I jammed the shifter into park and hopped out. I soaked in the warm late-evening rays and stretched, and my weary body cracked and popped several times as I straightened my long frame. It had been another long day installing drywall—It had been another long week installing drywall.

 But now it was the weekend!

 I had been heading to spend the evening at the bowling alley with my friends. Rock-n-bowl, Friday nights, where everything is bathed in blacklight and the balls and pins are luminous, speckled colors, where the crash of the pins is only matched by the almost deafening party music. The atmosphere there makes it easy to forget the worries and trials of young adulthood, at least for a couple of mind-numbing hours. I had been heading for that when I got the phone call. Mom and dad had decided to go on an impromptu date, and I was put on little brother duty.

I had tried for a moment to plead my way out of it. I hemmed and hawed, and when I finally resigned my plans for the evening, it was with a long-suffering sigh and a goodbye bordering on hostile. I know I sound selfish—and I guess I am. But I had worked hard all week; didn’t I deserve to spend my Friday evening how I wanted?

 I consider my little brother Jack to be a certified pain. He is the literal definition of the baby of the family— the poster child of over-spoiled and annoying. What’s worse, I get the brunt of him. My older siblings, Glenn and Alexa, had long since acquired their wings and soared out of the nest, leaving me alone with my hatchling of a brother and his obnoxious, hungry chirpings. He is 12, 9 years younger than me. I suppose he’s not fresh out of the egg in that sense, but he’s still a content pubescent caught in the everyday pleasures of childhood. On my good days, I am decently amiable toward him, as long as he doesn’t intrude too much into my grown-up life. On my bad days, I would rather just ignore him, to put a force-field around my life’s sphere.

I think this might be one of my bad days.

That said, I had been put in charge of him for the evening, so I strode down the cracked sidewalk toward the Davis’s house in moody silence. Their small herd of kids are Jack’s best friends. Mom had let me know that this was where Jack had been spending his lazy summer afternoon, and shouts of joy and cheerful laughter directed me to the backyard, where I found him. He and four of the Davis’s were jumping on their trampoline. The youngest Davis boy—I never have learned any of their names—was hunched in the fetal position on the mat, knees clasped tightly to his chest, while the three other Davis kids and Jack jumped in a ring around him. From the looks of it, they were trying to bounce the young boy high enough to break him of his tight hold. It was a fun old game that I remembered playing such a seemingly long time ago. 

The children were laughing and calling out jokes to one another, completely oblivious to my intrusion. I watched them from the other side of the fence that ringed the Davis’s back yard. Their cheeks were flushed and dimpled in excited smiles. Their hair was standing up every which way from all the bouncing and the static electricity from the trampoline, and the evening sun’s slanting rays shone brightly through it all, giving the impression that they each had a hazy, golden halo. It was almost comical, but at the same time it looked . . . serene. They didn’t feel a pressure to be orderly and properly austere. They were expressing their friendship with enthusiastic abandon, not caring to put up an adult facade.

I watched as the little boy in the center came down from a particularly high bounce and splatted like an egg on the stretchy canvas—limbs flailing, his hold finally broken. The little boy rolled onto his back and giggled ridiculously. The other kids whooped with victory. I almost laughed with them; I even thought of joining them. I imagined myself jumping high and launching all five of the little ones sky high. That would get them giggling, that’s for sure!

Then a volleyball-sized bouncy ball slammed into my forehead. My head jerked, and I went reeling backwards a step. The kids burst out laughing again, and Jack called out in a sing song voice, “Hey, Mike the man!”

I frowned, my moment of reverie instantly gone, as if the ball had bounced it right from my brain. “Time to go, squirt,” I grumbled.

The kids were immediately crest fallen, and Jack opened his mouth to protest. A severe look by me cut him down before he could give voice to it, though. I watched the kids climb down from the trampoline and plod over toward the gate. I was glad that my authority was going unchallenged, but at the same time . . . it felt kind of lame to be the bad guy. At least for the Davis kids. I didn’t care a ton that I was ruining Jack’s fun, because he had already ruined mine.

Jack was first to file out of the backyard gate and pressed past me. He picked up the bouncy ball he had playfully flung at me and lobbed it back over the fence. The oldest Davis girl, who was about Jack’s age, smiled at me as she tried to press back her frazzled auburn hair with the palms of her hands. She was small, even for a twelve-year old, which made her even more cute. I made a mental note to tease Jack about her later.

“Was it a long day at work?” she asked. The tone of her voice was more questioning then it needed to be for a simple conversation-making question, as if she really wanted to ask, “Why is Jack’s brother so grumpy?”

I shrugged. “Kind of normal.”

“Did you get to enjoy the sun?”

I laughed a little at this. “No, not really. I do drywall.” I left it at that, as if she should know that duh, all drywall is indoors.

I walked around to the front of the house with the band of halflings thronged around me. Jack broke from the group and away from the straight shot to my car.

“Where you going, Jack?”

“Gotta get my bike.”

“Your bike?”

Jack looked at me like I had the brain of a clownfish. “Yeah, how else do you think I got here?”

“How do you think we’re going to fit it in my car, genius?” I shot back.

“It’s a hatchback. It’ll fit.”

Of course it would. That was the one thing about my mid-range muscle car, my beautiful Chevy Malibu. I had dumped all my savings into the station wagon model my late uncle had owned. I had loved the extra space in the back end at first. It was practical and convenient, was my thought, and I was a practical and convenient guy who also liked fast cars. However, it’s ridiculously wide rear end had become the butt end of many jokes from my coworkers—and that pun was definitely not intended.

Jack fetched his beat up, Wal-Mart brand bike from where it had been dumped in the front yard. He wheeled it toward me as I flipped open the hatch. My tool bag was dumped back there, along with several empty Monster cans, a Frisbee, and an old college textbook. It wasn’t exactly clean, but I was still reluctant to cram a dirty bike back there. I grumbled under my breath as I took the bike from Jack and lifted it in. When it was all said and done, the front tire left a smear of dirt on the seatback, and I nearly wrenched the handle bars off as I twisted them at an awkward angle to make the bike fit. I slammed the hatch shut with an exasperated sigh.

“Let’s go.”

Jack hugged his friends and said goodbye. I waved once to the kids out of a sense of obligation and hopped into the driver’s seat to check my notifications. Jack finally got in next to me, and I put my phone down and reached for the ignition. My engine roared to life, and I floored the gas for fun. I peeled out, and with a spray of gravel and a cloud’s worth of exhaust, we were off. The Davis kids laughed and clapped behind me. I smiled despite myself.

Neither of us spoke for a while.

“Fun day?” I asked when the silence became unbearable.

“Yeah, definitely!” Jack said with true enthusiasm. He didn’t reciprocate with a question of his own, so silence returned for a couple more awkward minutes. I decided to make use of that mental note to tease him.

“That Davis girl is cute.”

“Nicole?” Jack blushed a little even as he said it.

“Is that her name?” I asked. “Of the girl with the auburn hair, about your age but shorter?”

“Yeah, that’s Nicole.” Jack hesitated. “I like her. A lot.”

I glanced at him sharply. “You like her… like actually like like?”

Jack shrugged and stayed quiet.

I snorted and looked back out the windshield, straight ahead. “Aren’t you a little young. I mean, you’re twelve.”

“You mean you never had a crush on anyone when you were my age?” Jack retorted. He was being genuine, and there was this intense look on his face as if he was wondering if there was something wrong with him.

“No yeah—I mean yes, I guess I did,” I softened somewhat. “But of course, they never worked out or anything. You shouldn’t think about it too much.”

“Then why’d you bring it up?”

“I don’t know . . . I guess it was lame of me.” I paid a lot of attention to the stop sign I was rolling up to.

“I wish I was old like you,” Jack said wistfully. “Then it would work out.”

I laughed ruefully. “Being older doesn’t fix anything, kid. It doesn’t even work out when you are old enough for a relationship sometimes.”

“Like with Megan?”

“Yeah,” I said quietly. Megan had been my girlfriend for almost nine months before a painful breakup late in the spring. I had thought she would be the one. We had been a great couple, even. But now there was only that lingering, hollow ache that only the freshly single know so well. I tried to gulp down the lump in my throat and blinked rapidly at the late evening sunlight, as if it were the slanted rays that caused the tears in the corner of my eyes.

Jack watched me carefully. “I still wish I was older,” he said.

“What do you know? You should just be happy to be you!” I retorted, and I was surprised by the force of anger in my voice. “Being ‘grown-up’ isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.” I almost added more. I almost unloaded on him all my secret thoughts about how I wished I could be his age again, how I wished I could be free of the many pressures and hurts of my newfound adult life. But I managed to bite my tongue and turn my angry thoughts inward. It wouldn’t do to crush all of Jack’s wistful idealism about being “old”, a darkly sarcastic part of me reasoned.

It was almost tragically ironic. Here we were, two brothers, both with idealisms and dreams. The only difference was one of us wished for the future while the other longed for the past.

We rolled through our small town. Well, comparatively small. It had more than just the standard post office, hardware store, grocery store, and gas station. We had a small strip mall that fostered a revolving door of failed startup businesses, a couple of banks, a movie theater, several restaurants of both the mom and pop and chain variety, the bowling alley, Wal-Mart, and several other stores. It took about 5 minutes to get from the Davis’s side of town to the north to ours on the south.

Even though I rolled through it almost without thought, our town was nice. The filtered rays of the golden sunset bathed it in a comfortable glow, and friendly town folk waved occasionally from the sidewalk or from the front porches of the houses interspaced between the businesses. I had often had big dreams of leaving this town as soon as possible when I was younger, but those big dreams had slowly but surely been corroded by this—this small-town charm I rolled through every evening.

Jack grew especially quiet when we approached our one ice cream shop in town, a Baskin Robbins. An intensely thoughtful look worked itself onto his face. I could see the gears turning in his mind. He was wondering if there was any conceivable chance his big brother would have a drastic mood swing and buy him an ice cream.  

I snorted.

“What?” Jack asked

.

“Oh nothing,” I said, and there was a pause.

“Sure was a hot day,” Jack offered a moment later.

“Yeah, almost hot enough to make me want an ice cream cone.”

“Yeah?" Jack perked up hopefully.

“Almost,” I repeated.

Jack hung his shoulders. He looked kind of like a birthday balloon that had lost its helium. He couldn’t see that his little scheme hadn’t completely failed, because he couldn’t see my thoughts. It had been a hot day, and it was the weekend. Plus, the money I had planned to spend for bowling would more than cover a triple-scoop waffle cone. On a sudden whim I jammed the brakes and turned into Baskin Robbin’s parking lot. Spontaneity—Maybe that’s something adulthood had taken from me. And maybe that was a good thing. But maybe, just maybe, it was okay to enjoy life a little sometimes.

Jack looked at me, his eyes as big as baseballs, and all but squealed with surprise and ecstasy. “Oh yeah, ice cream! Thanks, Mike!”

Where I might have had a warm feeling of good will, a twinge of indignation gripped me instead. I had this urge to teach Jack a lesson on responsibility and its correlation to privileges. What right did he have to just assume I’d buy him ice cream? I brooded on that thought for a bit.

“Have you ever heard the expression, ‘there’s no such thing as a free lunch?’” I asked as I held the door to Baskin Robbins open for him.

Jack slowly pulled himself out of ice cream euphoria and blinked up at me. “No . . .” he said dubiously.

“It means that we have to buy what we want, or else if something is free, it’s only because the person who gave it to us expects something from us. Like taxes. Or our dependence and eventual slave labor.”

The politics of it clearly flew over Jack’s head. “What does that have to do with ice cream?” he asked.

“It means I’m buying mine, and you’re old enough to start paying for your own.”

Jack protested. I pointed out that he had money from mowing Mrs. Carrol’s lawn across the street.

“Yeah for like $5 a mow,” Jack countered. “You make way more money!”

“Since when did you become a communist?” I retorted. “And anyway, last I checked, five bucks can buy you plenty of ice cream.”

“And when did you become a stingy old miser,” I heard Jack say under his breath as he turned away to exam the closest fridge of ice cream flavors.

“Welcome to Baskin Robbins!” a ditsy teenager said from behind the counter. “What can I get started for you?”

 I acknowledged her with a nod. I tried a few samples like I always did before going with my tried and true favorites: strawberry, sea salt caramel, and chocolate. All the while I stewed over Jack’s last comment. He didn’t understand the adult world of money! He didn’t understand how hard we worked for it and how important it was to save and not just spend frivolously!

“Believe me, man,” I added as almost an afterthought as I watched Jack struggle to pick what flavors he wanted. “I wish I could be like you again and spend my money as quickly as I earned it. But adults have responsibilities.”

Jack shrugged by way of giving me the cold shoulder and didn’t even respond. He was taking forever to order his ice cream. Finally, he settled on two flavors.

“Gross, dude, seriously? Of all the 31 flavors, you chose sherbet and cotton candy?” I said.

“Are you guys paying together or separately?” Ditsy Girl said from behind the cash register. She looked at me expectantly.

I looked her squarely in the eye and said, “Separately.”

“Oh.” Her tone was somewhere between shocked and condescending. I looked down at the register. The display read $9.43. She began to mess with the keyboard, trying to cancel the order and re-enter each ice cream separately.

I guessed she was probably a communist too.

Meanwhile, Jack dug into the pockets of his cargo shorts. He produced two crumpled dollar bills and started counting out nickels and dimes. And a few pennies. I sighed and decided to drop the morality lesson.

“Forget about it,” I said. “I got both of them.” I handed the girl my debit card. Jack returned his dollars and coins to his pocket with a relieved look on his face.

Back in my Malibu, the only sound was the smacking of our lips as we enjoyed the ice cream. I slowly eased back onto the road, driving one-handed. As far as I knew, driving and eating ice cream wasn’t illegal yet. I kept glancing over at Jack . . . at the pleasure in his dirty, sweat-stained face that was soon to be joined by sticky sherbet smears. The way his lips were puckered from the cold of his ice cream. The way his chubby cheeks were drawn back and dimpled as he ate the top off his ice cream cone. The slurping and smacking noises he made as he sucked the sweet cream down his throat.

I was waiting for some kind of acknowledgment, some kind of thank you. Deep down I knew I didn’t really deserve a thank you. I had been a pill all evening, and I started to think this chip on my shoulder was more like an anchor dragging me down. A part of me started to wish I could just reboot the evening.

But it still would have been nice for him to say it.

As if he knew I was expecting something, Jack turned to me and said, “I’ll start earning more money soon.”

I shrugged, caught off guard. His words slipped under the armor of manufactured grudges I had been holding against him, but they didn’t really hit a soft spot. “Yeah, it’s nice to have,” was all I managed.

“It’s not everything, though,” Jack confided.

“It’s what we need to live.”

Jack nodded. “But I’d rather live for other things.”

I was about to correct Jack that I had not meant that I lived for money, but the air I sucked into my lungs to protest never turned to words. I licked my ice cream thoughtfully instead. Maybe, in this season where money meant the difference between a boy and a man—where all I needed was money to pursue my dreams—maybe it had become what I lived for. What else had more control of me? God? I rarely found time to open His Word between Sundays. My parents? Their authoritative role had diminished ever since I had gotten a car and a boss, though they still let me live in their house for rent. Maybe Megan a few months ago, but not anymore. Was I a slave to earning and saving? I looked at Jack again, not with a grudge, but with . . . something close to envy.

“Maybe money isn’t so freeing after all,” I mumbled.

Jack shrugged. “Yeah, I guess . . .” He was thinking too, but his crinkled forehead and the thoughtful look in his eyes passed quickly like a cloud on a summer day.  “It bought ice cream, though.”

I smiled a little bit. “Close enough to happiness, right?”

The joke slowly dawned on Jack, and he burst out laughing.

“What?” I said. “It’s not that funny.”

And I was right. The joke wasn’t really that funny, but Jack was still laughing. I felt like I was on the other side of a fence again, watching a world I had grown too old for but somehow still wanted. Maybe I could join it, just for a moment.

“You’re going to snort ice cream up your nose,” I said, and I grinned impulsively.

Jack laughed even harder and snorted in-between breaths. “Ow, ow, you’re right!” he gasped between breaths.

Now I laughed. He looked so comical, his face contorted in a laugh and grimace at the same time. And the thing was, with each laugh I felt the chip on my shoulder growing lighter, as if it was being shaken off. And it actually felt good—like I could just be free.

A sudden thought struck me as I laughed: maybe the way to enter that old world on the other side of the fence was to let Jack into mine. I had bought hook, line and sinker the culture’s idea that little siblings were nuisances to be avoided at all costs . . . but perhaps that was all wrong. I thought of a verse from the Bible just then, something Jesus had said: “Let the little children come to me.” Maybe the example of the wisest man on earth was worth following.

Our ice cream was consumed, but we were still snickering when I turned into our gravel drive. It was a long driveway, about a mile long, but I actually felt a twinge of regret that we only had a mile of our drive left. So much for bowling. This was starting to feel like it could be more fun somehow. More real. I stopped the car abruptly and turned to Jack.

“Hey, you wanna drive?”

Jack’s eyes turned to baseballs again. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, sure. Don’t you want to?”

Jack nodded excitedly. “Like, on your lap, or trade places?”

I slid my chair back all it could go, which was about two notches further then I already had it set for my long legs. “Lap,” I said. “For your first time, anyway.”

Jack clambered over onto my lap awkwardly. His face pressed into my shoulder for a solid 15 seconds as he tried to get his feet under the dash and near the pedals. I laughed again, not caring that he was getting sweat-caked dirt and leftover sherbet on my t-shirt. It was a work shirt anyway. Finally Jack got himself situated. His tummy was an inch or less from the wheel, and the back of his head stuck in my face. I craned my neck to get a view out the windshield and said, “Okay, let’s do this.”

Jack took a deep breath as he put the car in drive. A sort of gravity fell over him. Risk and reward, I realized. Responsibility. He eased onto the gas and started puttering down the road at about 7 miles an hour.

“Come on, bro, let’s hit it!” I knocked his foot off the gas with my own and stomped on the pedal.

We spun out and swerved precariously, and Jack squealed with ecstasy and terror. I added a holler of my own as Jack got us straightened out, and we flew down the road. The sun was down, and the first few stars appearing in the dusky sky winked at us as we sped below. The neighbors to our left had horses fenced next to the road, and the startled beasts took to flight and ran along the fence line ahead of us. I rolled down the window and whooped at them as we caught up and passed them. Jack added a whoop of his own.

“This is amazing!” he shouted, giving each word emphasis.

“Yeah buddy!” I yelled back.

And in that one moment, that one glorious moment, our worlds collided and shattered in a kaleidoscope of shared emotions. I forgot about whatever season of life it was I was supposed to be living in—or rather, I lost all feelings of disappointment and longing to be someone I could not be. In that second with Jack, I breathed deeply and added one last joyful yell.

And I was happy just to be.